© REUTERS/Wolfgang Rattay

It was the summer of 2015. Hundreds of thousands of refugees from Syria, Afghanistan, Ethiopia, and elsewhere were making their way to Germany, drawn by Chancellor Angela Merkel’s decision to keep the borders open and by crowds of welcoming Germans. The country was torn between an intense joy over being able to help and a deep fear of being overwhelmed.
At a press conference in Berlin on August 31, Merkel was asked about the immense challenges of this massive influx. “Wir schaffen das,” she said, meaning “We can do it.“ It was a slogan that became iconic. Supporters of a liberal refugee policy used it as a rallying shout; opponents repeated it with deep sarcasm.

Nearly four years later, normalcy has mostly returned to Germany. Tight patrols on the EU’s borders and a series of bilateral agreements with neighboring countries have sharply brought down the number of refugees newly arriving in Germany. Even so, the country is still home to 1.7 million asylum seekers and refugees, most of whom have arrived in 2015 and since.
Integration is happening—and even happening faster than in many other Western countries—but it continues to be a lengthy, difficult, and demanding process. Even now, only every third immigrant from war-torn countries like Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, or Somalia has a job that gives him or her access to social security benefits, according to a discussion paper published in June by the Berlin Institute for Population and Development.

“There is no doubt that this is a success, but it is to be enjoyed with some caution,” said the institute’s director Reiner Klingholz. “Many of the refugees work in sectors where fluctuation is very high, and most of them have temporary or low-skilled jobs.” Even people who may have had their own business or who held management positions back home now work in restaurants, hotels, or cleaning services.

A Very Slow Process

Still, integration into the labor market is happening a little bit quicker now than in the 1990s, when Germany took in a million refugees from former Yugoslavia. Five years after arrival, the Berlin Institute for Population and Development said, just under half of those refugees had found jobs. After ten years, the percentage went up to 60 percent. It took 15 years for refugees from Yugoslavia to reach an employment share of 70 percent, which corresponds to other immigrant groups.

Germany has integrated the most recent wave of refugees faster than most other industrialized countries. According to a study published in January by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), the average among its 33 member states was that five years after arrival, only one in five refugees was employed, with a particularly low percentage for women.

Low employment translates into lower well-being as measured by household income, housing conditions, life satisfaction, social support, and students’ skills, the OECD writes. Even in comparison to other migrant groups, refugees do badly. On average, it takes them 20 years to catch up even with other migrant groups.

Three main reasons stand out: first, refugees do not make a choice about leaving their country but are forced to do so; second, they are often less qualified than other migrant groups; and third, many are traumatized by persecution, war, and tragedy during their flight.

Hardships and Handicaps

The numbers are shocking. For Germany, the IAB-BAMF-SOEP Refugee Survey, a repeated survey among 5000 refugees, showed that one-quarter of respondents had survived shipwrecks. Two-fifths had been victims of physical assault; one-fifth had been robbed; more than half had fallen victim to fraud; more than one-quarter had been blackmailed; and 15 percent of female refugees reported having been sexually assaulted.
So what seems slow at first look—only one out of three Syrians, Afghans, or Eritreans in Germany holding down a job that gives access to social security—is actually a huge achievement. On arrival, according to the survey, fewer than one out of ten refugees spoke any German. Today, one third has good or excellent language skills, and another third has reasonable German.

Another issue that takes time to remedy is the lack of education and training: every fourth refugee who arrived in Germany between 2013 and 2016 had never gone to school or only attended elementary school, the Berlin Institute for Population and Development said. Three quarters had no professional education. To make things worse, new arrivals had little information about the German labor market and not much of a personal network to help them along.

“Getting qualifications takes a lot of time: maybe two years to learn the language and then another three years for professional training,” Klingholz said. Many refugees need to quickly earn money in order to support family members back home or in transit, or to pay back the traffickers who brought them to Germany. “Intellectually, these people know that they are getting themselves stuck in lower-paid and more precarious jobs, but this is overruled by their needs.”

A Thicket of Regulations

By now, however, most refugees have been in Germany long enough that individual issues have ceased to weigh so heavy, said Klingholz. Instead, it is institutional hurdles that keep them away from jobs and therefore integration. As a federal state, Germany has an enormously complex system of federal, regional, and local authorities, which all have a say in granting asylum, accepting qualifications, or providing access to the labor market, training opportunities, language courses, medical benefits, or housing.

The relevant sector of legislation is as extensive and complicated as tax law once was. For instance, there are many kinds of residence permits that all give access to different rights and benefits, creating enormous uncertainties for the refugees themselves, but also for companies considering training or hiring them. At Berlin’s Ausländerbehörde, the agency that deals with foreigners, procedural notes alone amount to some 800 pages.

“The law is like an overprotective mother,” said Engelhard Mazanke, the agency’s head. “Sometimes, it really strangles us. And the more complex it is, the more difficult it is to do justice to an individual case.” Analysts say that much of the bureaucratic tangle is due to contradictory objectives: trying to be discouraging to potential new asylum seekers (in a clear turn-around from 2015), yet accepting that those who already are in the country should be given help to integrate.

Germany, with its ageing population and lack of skilled workers, might do well to take a clearer and more generous line, Klingholz said, pointing to two demographic characteristics of the recently arrived refugees. First, there was the high number of children: more than half a million refugees were under 18 when they registered for asylum between 2015 and 2018, according to his institute’s data. By now, younger children have been integrated into the German school system, giving them native German and a perspective to acquire much better professional skills than the older generation.

The largest group among those asylum seekers, however, were young adults―again, half a million in the age group 18 to 29. More than two thirds of these are men. And while young men can certainly adapt more easily to life and work in Germany than older people, they also represent a higher risk to society if they cannot find jobs and set up families.

“We are running out of time,” said Eberhard Mazanke from the Berliner Ausländerbehörde. “We have many young men here, people in their 20s, and they want to start their lives.”

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Artwork © Dominik Herrmann

When Europe’s heads of government staggered bleary-eyed out of a Council meeting on the morning of June 29th, it looked as if they had broken the migration policy deadlock. Angela Merkel had the result she needed to keep her government together and calm her sister party, the Bavarian CSU. The new Italian prime minister, Giuseppe Conte, was also pleased– he had gotten promises of support from the rest of Europe with the migrants landing on his country’s Mediterranean coastline, and Italy was now “no longer alone.” With the ostensible breakthrough emerged a new term: “regional disembarkation platforms.” But what exactly was Brussels’ new baby?

The objective of these platforms, later called regional disembarkation “arrangements,” is to “provide quick and safe disembarkation on both sides of the Mediterranean of rescued people in line with international law, including the principle of non-refoulement, and a responsible post-disembarkation process.” According to various official EU documents, key elements of the concept are: having “clear rules for all,” support from the UN Refugee Agency, “partnerships on equal footing,” “no pull factors,” and “no detention, no camps.”

Emphatically Not Camps

Got it? OK, there’s more detail to come. But it’s notable that the EU fact sheet does not contain a sentence that plainly states what the disembarkation platforms are. No subject and predicate linked by a copula, not even an “appear” or “will become.” But remember, they are emphatically not camps.

This, though, is not just an example of obfuscatory bureaucrat speak, of which the EU is a master in English, run as it is by highly educated officials who often speak excellent English as a second or third or fourth language, peppering their statements with words like “informations” and “feedbacks” that are foreign to a native. The problem is that it’s very difficult to be clear about a concept that must be all things to all people.

Some parts about disembarkation platforms are somewhat clear. The core idea is to set up safe centers for processing asylum claims outside of EU borders, probably in safe countries in North Africa. This would “eliminate the incentive to embark on perilous journeys” across the sea in order to have the right to file an asylum claim. It would also help stop people smugglers, a noble goal. If a migrant at sea is rescued by a third-country vessel or by an EU vessel in international waters, he or she could be brought to one of the platforms. Those people not entitled to international protection should “be returned,” while those in need of protection could be resettled, though not all of them would get to go to Europe. In order to entice African countries to sign up, the EU will offer money, training, administrative support, and legal resettlement places.   

Kurz’ Idea

This is not a new concept. European leaders have long floated similar plans. At the restrictive end of the spectrum, Sebastian Kurz of Austria has pushed for “safe zones” in refugees’ countries of origin, which the EU would support “militarily.” Indeed, the 2016 EU agreement with Turkey is based on the principle of a third country processing migrants and preventing so-called irregular migration in exchange for EU aid and concessions. All such ideas are part of the EU’s push to externalize the migration problem by getting other countries to take more responsibility for people crossing their borders, which also defuses the issue politically and minimizes the EU’s legal responsibility by reducing contact with migrants.

Europe’s partners, though, quickly made clear how difficult it would be to implement “disembarkation platforms.” The UN Refugee Agency reportedly wrote a confidential letter insisting that any centers in third countries be “safe and dignified,” a tall order in, for example, key transit country Libya given the deplorable conditions and slave markets there. African heads of state responded by agreeing to reject Europe’s “easy, counterproductive solution,” as Morocco described it. According to recent reports, there is still no African country prepared to operate a platform.  No government is eager to be fully responsible for the centers, or risk having rejected asylum-seekers disappear into its territory.

Migration experts agreed that the idea was fanciful. Catherine Woollard of the European Council on Refugees and Exiles accused the EU of living in “externalization fantasyland,” of relying on countries taking back their citizens when they are unwilling or unable to do so. To a developing country, remittances from citizens working in Europe are often more valuable than extra foreign aid; and sometimes these countries are wary of reaccepting emigrants for whom they couldn’t provide jobs or services in the first place.

Too Few Legal Ways

Europe also offers too few legal resettlement places to really discourage illegal migration, as Elizabeth Collett and Susan Fratzke of the Migration Policy Institute point out. In March 2018, the UN had to temporarily suspend a program whereby refugees were flown from Libya to Niger for processing because the EU had only resettled a fraction of the already small number promised. The EU’s first scheme to force member states to take in refugees from Italy and Greece already collapsed when the Visegrad countries revolted. And cooperation has hardly improved since the June summit: in August, the Italian government refused for six days to allow a boat of Eritrean migrants to disembark in Sicily until Ireland finally agreed to take some in.

It’s easy to snipe from the sidelines. Illegal migration to Europe is an intractable problem that is only likely to get bigger, at least from the perspective of Europe’s politicians. And the announcement from Brussels that the EU had agreed on a migration solution was certainly a boon to Merkel and Conte. Just don’t expect “disembarkation platforms” to be the breakthrough for European migration policy, or the next new name for refugee centers to be much more than window dressing. Unless North Africa has a change of heart, the only relevant platforms will be the piers where people get off boats.

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© REUTERS/Fabrizio Bensch

Germany’s shaky grand coalition government has survived its latest crisis. In the quarrel about the future of Hans-Georg Maassen, head of the German domestic intelligence service, Chancellor Angela Merkel has managed to paper over the deep differences that are marring her fourth term in office.

Yet Maassen’s transfer to the post of minister of state at the interior ministry is unlikely to restore faith in the German government’s problem-solving abilities. Once again the affair has touched on the most divisive issue of all: what to make of Merkel’s refugee policy that brought over a million Syrians and other asylum seekers to Germany in 2015/2016.

“Targeted Disinformation”

Maassen, who has long been critical of Merkel’s refugee policy, was under fire for an interview about right-wing riots in Chemnitz. He had “good reason,“ he said, to believe that a video showing neo-Nazi hooligans attacking dark-skinned people in the streets of Chemnitz at the end of August wasn’t real. Maassen actually spoke of “targeted disinformation.”

But not only had the top civil servant not informed the chancellery of his suspicions; Maassen was unable to provide any proof for his statements. Add to that reports of surprisingly friendly meetings with representatives of the right-wing populist Alternative for Germany (AfD), and Maassen appeared to have overstepped his bounds.

A major coalition crisis ensued, with Interior Minister Horst Seehofer backing Maassen and the Social Democrats, Merkel’s junior coalition partners, demanding his removal. Two emergency meetings of party heads were devoted to the issue before an agreement was reached on September 18.

According to the deal, Maassen has to leave his job at the helm of the Bundesamt für Verfassungsschutz (BfV). But he wasn’t kicked out or forcibly retired. Instead, he was promoted to minister of state in the interior ministry, a higher-ranked and better-paid job (by a hefty €2,500 per month). This may not be the outcome Maassen would have wished for, but it was certainly a lot better than he could have expected.

Interior Minister Seehofer, head of Merkel’s Bavarian sister party CSU and internal critic-in-chief of her refugee policy, also has reason to be satisfied. In the end, he wasn’t forced to choose between kicking out his protégé Maassen or leaving the government himself. Instead, he gained a state secretary who shares many of his own convictions and now owes him enormous personal loyalty, too.

An Anti-Merkel Bastion

In the short term, Merkel has kept her coalition together. But she has not been able to solve the deep split within her government. On the contrary, appointing Maassen as minister of state to Seehofer is likely to turn the interior ministry into even more of an anti-Merkel bastion.

The outcome is even more ambiguous for the Social Democrats. The SPD’s leadership got what it wanted: Maassen no longer heads the domestic intelligence service. But a number of leading Social Democrats openly pointed out that the deal actually amounted to rewarding disloyalty. “People wonder: have they all gone nuts?,” commented former party leader and foreign minister Sigmar Gabriel.

Exactly one year after the latest Bundestag elections, polls show that not even a third of voters are satisfied with the work of Merkel’s coalition, and the Maassen compromise is certain not to make them any happier. “You can’t find a better example of politics that normal people don’t understand,” the mass circulation Bild tabloid said in its commentary.

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© REUTERS/Michaela Rehle

On Wednesday, Bavaria opened the doors on seven “anchor centers.” The German word Anker is an acronym that leaves little doubt as to the centers’ purpose: arrival, decision, and return. The CSU hopes similar facilities will open elsewhere in Germany, but other federal states are skeptical and have yet to sign up. Opening one of seven such anchor centers, Bavarian state premier Markus Söder talked about using a “carrot and stick” approach to migration, providing arrivals with a decision within 18 months on whether they can stay or must go.

Aware of growing public skepticism and security concerns over migration, Bavarian officials say these centers will expedite asylum applications of people who have little chance of remaining, or those whom officials deem a threat. Asylum seekers with a good chance of securing residency, meanwhile, will be offered a chance to find work or enroll in training schemes or integration programs.

Integration Barriers?

But critics are asking how much integration is possible for people living in an out-of-town barracks behind mesh fences. The migration NGO Pro Asyl has called the anchor centers an “obstacle to integration by government decree,” with a “catastrophic effect” on those housed there. Meanwhile another NGO, Save the Children, attacked the fenced-in centers as a potential risk to the safety and development of their youngest residents.

“The same rights apply to a refugee child as any other children, such as access to education, healthcare and … protection,” said Susanne Krüger, head of the organization in Germany. The centers are controversial in Chancellor Angela Merkel’s government in Berlin, too. Johannes-Wilhelm Rörig, a government commissioner responsible for children’s rights, said he was concerned these were not guaranteed in the anchor centers. He has publicly questioned whether the Bavarian anchor centers in their current form conform with Germany’s commitments to the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child.

The Bavarians have knocked back all the critics, with CSU leader Horst Seehofer (also federal interior minister in Berlin) saying he was certain the anchor centers will be a “big success.” The opening of the centers comes ahead of a crucial state election in Bavaria in October. After decades in power, the CSU finds itself well short of enough support to retain its absolute majority in the state parliament. It hopes the new facilities have been launched in time to show wavering voters that the CSU is taking a tough law-and-order approach to migration, three years after more than one million people arrived in the country, largely through Bavaria.

On Wednesday, Bavaria’s state interior minister Joachim Hermann pointed out that the camps were all housed in pre-existing asylum centers. What’s new is that, instead of being distributed to municipalities, up to 1,500 residents will live in each center full-time, alongside asylum and other related agencies that process applications.

The camps are not closed and residents will be allowed come and go, he noted, while children will receive education inside the camps rather than at local schools. But Hermann made no bones about the purpose of the facilities: authorities had been instructed to take “visibly swift action,” he said, against migrants who break the law. Later this week, Bavaria will increase financial incentives for voluntary repatriation of migrants as well.

The new measures complement federal interior minister Horst Seehofer’s migration “master plan,” a 63-point paper presented last month to optimize and standardize asylum procedures. Seehofer had threatened to resign in Berlin and collapse the government unless his blueprint was adopted. In the end he struck a compromise with Chancellor Angela Merkel to deport migrants who have already filed for asylum elsewhere in the EU—if the other country agrees. Now he is engaged in talks with neighboring Austria and Italy to make the deal come about.

New Rules for Refugees

Wednesday was not just the launch of Bavaria’s new anchor centers, it also coincided with the start of new family reunification quotas, allowing up to 1,000 relatives of refugees with subsidiary (limited) protection to come to Germany each month. Those with subsidiary protection–people, often Syrians, who are not personally persecuted but nevertheless face a threat of serious harm in their home country—had not been able to bring relatives over since August 2015. Now a fraction of them will be able to.

Still, the opposition parties criticize a law they say makes international refugee law subject to arbitrary upper limits. But to keep her alliance together in Berlin, Chancellor Merkel has allowed her Bavarian allies considerable autonomy on the emotive asylum issue ahead of October’s election. Her other coalition partner, the center-left Social Democrats (SPD) are unimpressed by the new centers—not because they go too far, but because they are what interior spokesman Burkhard Lischka called a “bluff” with little practical change. “Just swapping out a few signs is silly,” he said.

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© REUTERS/Ammar Abdullah

In April, the United States, the United Kingdom, and France hit Syria to punish Bashar al-Assad for what French President Emmanuel Macron called clear proof that the Syrian government had wielded chemical weapons in Douma, outside of Damascus.  

While the US-led coalition launched their strikes, German Chancellor Angela Merkel supported her allies but did not join the operation—a decision that reflected Germans’ deep-seated pacifism and aversion to military missions in the post-war era. Still, her decision to publicly support the mission, but not join it, made it look like Berlin did not have the stomach to engage militarily itself.

Since the Syrian conflict began more than seven years ago, Germany has been caught in a conundrum. It is struggling to support fleeing Syrians while navigating a complex political terrain at home. It’s a conflict that has had very real consequences for  Merkel, with some one million Syrian refugees seeking asylum in Germany. It was the chancellor’s open-door policy in the summer of 2015, accepting those refugees stuck on the Balkan route, that led to a significant shift in Germany’s political landscape, reviving the right-wing populist Alternative für Deutschland (AfD).

And the war is far from over. Assad’s regime has regained control of most of the country, displacing half of the population in the process. Now, another flare-up is looming in Idlib, one of the areas that remains out of the government’s grasp. Syria observers fear another catastrophe is imminent, one that would have further consequences for Berlin.

Opposition Stronghold

Idlib, in the north of the country, is one of the last remaining strongholds for opposition forces. It is home to 2.5 million Syrians. A serious attack on Idlib is a question of when, not if. The war is set to escalate in the province, and Germany may have more Syrians at its doorstep once Assad begins his quest to take it back. Among the thousands of Syrians who were displaced from Ghouta, many told me in phone conversations that they are already trying legal and illegal avenues to reach Germany.

It’s worth looking at the complex situation on the ground. Myriad groups are competing for control of Idlib. The Free Syrian Army, made up of several smaller alliances, is locked in a fierce battle for control with the Islamist extremist Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, or HTS, a group that was previously known as Jabhat al Nusra and was allied with Al Qaeda.

HTS dominates Idlib and has imposed a harsh social code on people living there; it poses a vital threat to civilians who moved there to escape Assad’s clutches and sought safety near Turkey. And Russia, Assad’s ally, will use the presence of HTS in the region, and the group’s former ties to Al Qaeda, to justify an eventual regime offensive in Idlib.

Germany’s Time to Step Up

If Chancellor Merkel does not want to put boots on the ground in Idlib or threaten Assad militarily, what can Germany do to avoid the devastation waiting to unfold in Idlib?

Germany can come in and play an active diplomatic role in encouraging Turkey to rein in the jihadis just across its border, either by using its existing channels of communication or military force. Ankara’s relationship with the jihadis is ambiguous; in the early stages of the Syrian war, Istanbul was accused of supporting the Islamists in Syria, but of late President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who got reelected on Sunday, appears more willing to limit their influence. 

If Turkey fails to reach some sort of agreement with the Islamists, Ankara could opt for pushing the jihadis out with force. It might well have an interest in doing so. The proximity of Idlib to Kurdish-controlled areas on Turkey’s borders makes it an important location for Ankara’s strategic interests. Erdogan is in a position to better manage secessionist Kurds if the Free Syrian Army is in charge rather than the HTS. Without HTS in Idlib, the regime and the Russians wouldn’t have a pretext to bomb the region. Turkish forces are already in Idlib anyway, operating observation posts in rebel areas to assure a stake in region after the war ends.

There are other reasons why bold action might serve Turkish interests. Turkey, already home to three million Syrian refugees, has all but shut its doors to accepting more asylum seekers. In the event of a fresh offensive by Assad’s forces, millions of Syrians would be forced to knock on Turkish doors before they seek entry to Europe. In turn, Berlin can add its voice to calls from Washington and Istanbul to allow Free Syrian Army groups to take control of the province.

Even so, these measures might not be enough to stop Assad. He is quite likely to go ahead with the attack on Idlib in the name of Syrian sovereignty. One man who can stop him is Russian President Vladimir Putin. And the Russians might have a stake in containing Syria’s Islamist forces as well. Moscow believes hundreds of Russians joined ISIS and HTS and fear their return may present dangers back home.

A Constructive Role

What’s more, Berlin has professed its willingness to play a constructive role in the Syrian crisis. Idlib can be a test case for German diplomacy. If the Germans won’t talk to Assad they must talk to Putin. German-Russian relations have been strained by Moscow’s annexation of Crimea and cyber attacks linked to Russian hackers, but Merkel is the Western leader that always kept communications open with the Kremlin and knows Putin best. She should make the case to Russia that Idlib is crucially important as a safe zone for Syrians escaping regime-held areas.

Germany can attempt to save millions by exercising its leverage through tactful foreign policy. In my conversations with Syrians and senior Syrian government officials, Berlin has emerged as a fair player for both pro-regime and anti-regime camps. The rebels have told me they are grateful for the welcome many refugees have received in Germany, while pro-regime Syrians say Berlin has remained a moderate voice in criticizing Assad’s government, at least compared to Paris, London, and Washington.

So far, however, it seems Germany will take a back seat and watch as the regime attacks Idlib. But, with its stature on the international stage, Germany should step up and use its diplomatic might to resolve the crisis. Merkel must move beyond empty statements that do little else than express a desire for peace.

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© REUTERS/ Bernadett Szabo

After a landslide victory at the ballot boxes for his Fidesz party in April, Hungary’s strongman, Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, has wasted no time continuing his crusade against civil society.

He has set his sights squarely upon NGOs funded by US billionaire George Soros’s Open Society Foundation, as well as the Central European University (CEU) in Budapest, which Soros founded. Orbán’s aim is to continue the omnipresent political campaign against migrants and liberalism in order to distract from massive corruption in his government and among his supporters; he also aims to consolidate his place as the main anti-liberal ideologue in Europe.

On Tuesday Orbán’s government submitted the so-called “Stop Soros” legislation package. The legislation further restricts NGOs working on migration; it also makes it more difficult to monitor the government’s migration policy, and easier to crack down on its critics. Meanwhile, Orbán is refusing to sign a deal with CEU that would secure the university’s future in Budapest.

The bill, according to a briefing by Fidesz group leader Mate Kocsis on Monday, will make “organizing illegal migration” a crime. How is this defined? For example, assisting people who have not been victims of persecution at home to initiate an asylum procedure would become illegal. Such deeds would be punishable by 5-90 days behind bars. The question of determining whether someone was persecuted, however, usually takes place during the asylum procedure itself. Distributing information leaflets on migration and monitoring the border for human rights or asylum law violations would also count as illegal “organization”, according to Kocsis.

Finally, Fidesz also plans to use its two-thirds majority in parliament to amend the constitution to ensure that the EU cannot force Hungary to accept migrants. Orbán wants the Stop Soros bill passed by parliament by June 20.

The Hungarian government already tightened regulations on foreign-funded NGOs in June of last year. That legislation broke EU rules, according to the European Commission, which referred the law to the European Court of Justice last December. But it could be years before the ECJ makes a decision, and until then, the law remains in force—of course, that was part of Orbán’s strategy.

Civil Society Under Pressure

Many Hungarians support these measures. The prime minister’s loyalists argue that NGOs are taking up a political role without having been elected.

“Those loopholes that still exist in the legal system that allow organizations not entitled…to meddle in political decision-making should be closed,” government spokesman Zoltan Kovacs said after April’s elections. Yet it is the government’s onslaught on human rights that forced some NGOs to take a stance in the political arena.

Orbán’s government claims it wants to ensure greater transparency, but NGOs say the legislation and the accompanying government propaganda has stigmatized them and their work. While some NGOs have decided to comply with the government’s new demands, many of those dealing with migration and human rights initially refused. But then Orban stepped up the pressure: After the election, government-friendly media published the names of some 200 people working in migration, including members of the human rights organization Amnesty International, the anti-corruption watchdog Transparency International, refugee advocates, investigative journalists, and faculty members from CEU.

The publication of the list revived memories of the darkest days in Hungary’s history and shook up civil society. In response, Soros’s Open Society Foundation (OSF) removed all names and contact details of its Budapest employees from its website, citing concerns over the security of staff. A month later, the OSF decided to relocate its regional headquarters from Budapest to Berlin, blaming “an increasingly repressive political and legal environment.” The pro-democracy foundation has helped to transform post-communist Hungary into a liberal democracy, but it is clearly no longer welcome in Orbán’s illiberal state.

Some of the threatened NGOs are forging ahead, saying they are receiving more funding from individual citizens. “We have received many supportive messages,” said Marta Pardavi, co-chair of the Hungarian Helsinki Committee, which provides legal services for asylum-seekers, including from EU ambassadors. Nevertheless some partners – typically public institutions involved in implementing projects—are reluctant to continue their work under political pressure.

CEU’s Fate Up in the Air

It’s not all about migration. Orbán is not backing down is his battle against the Central European University either. For the prime minister and his far-right friends, who want to protect the nation state and a perceived European Christian identity from globalization and multiculturalism, the liberal institution is another pillar in a world order that they see as outdated. Indeed, in early May, Orban welcomed Steve Bannon, the far-right former chief strategist to Donald Trump who denounces liberal migration policies and “the EU” at every turn.

After the government amended the higher education law, a deal to secure CEU’s future appeared to be within reach last autumn. But Orban has yet to sign off the agreement. CEU says it has done everything to comply with the government’s requests, including opening a US campus. Foreign minister Peter Szijjarto said last week that the government is awaiting a report from a government committee that visited the US campus in April. Zsolt Enyedi, CEU’s pro-rector and a political scientist, says the government is clearly stonewalling.

Enyedi told me that, in order to start planning for the next academic year, the university would like to have certainty from the government by graduation at the end of June. “By then, we would like to be able to tell our students something,” he said.

He added that he thinks the government’s delay could be a tactic to force CEU to force to Vienna, or to use the university as a bargaining chip in talks with Brussels and Washington. “By now it is clear that the government cannot hide behind professional and regulatory reasons, the question is whether the prime minister wants to kick out CEU from Hungary or not,” he said.

An Illiberal State

 In 2014 Viktor Orban set out to build what he called an illiberal state. The announcement was met with surprise, disbelief, and even amusement among observers. But four years later, Orban has scored three consecutive election victories and plans to stay in power until at least 2030.

Enyedi said Orban has been successful in dismantling the institutional checks and balances in Hungary’s liberal democracy, but he has not been completely successful in convincing Hungarians that liberal democracy is a bad thing. “The average Hungarian still sees his/her future in a western-type liberal democracy and in the EU, but there is uncertainty, which partly stems from the EU’s uncertainty,” he said. “People perceive that real power is with the anti-liberal populist forces rather than the EU, while the EU has been increasingly seen as a fragmented and weak project.” For a leader seeking to build an illiberal democracy in Europe, a “weak” EU is a very good thing.

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© REUTERS/Francois Lenoir

How to deal with refugees is by far the most divisive issue the European Union is facing. Over the past two years, it has been fodder for populist parties playing on fears of competition, cultural alienation, and terrorism, and has dramatically deepened the divide between eastern and western EU member states.

A recent ruling by the European Court of Justice is heightening those tensions. On September 6, the judges in Luxembourg decided that Hungary and Slovakia were in fact bound by a decision EU interior ministers took two years ago to relocate refugees among the member states. The court ruling was a defeat for Poland’s right-wing government, which had supported a movement for annulment. Both Hungary and Poland have already come under pressure from the EU for laws restricting the independence of the judiciary and the freedom of the press.

Reactions to the ruling were mixed. Slovakia grudgingly accepted the decision, while Hungary initially rebelled, with Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto calling the decision unacceptable, outrageous, and irresponsible. “Politics have raped European law,” he added.

It took the Budapest government a full three days to publicly acknowledge the EU’s jurisdiction. “Hungary is an EU member, the treaties must be respected and the rulings of the European Court of Justice must be observed,” Prime Minister Viktor Orbán finally said in a radio interview.

A Big Deal

In terms of numbers, the court’s decision is irrelevant. Of a total of 120,000 refugees, Hungary was supposed to take in 1,294, Slovakia 902. EU ministers agreed in 2015 on a time frame of two years for the relocation, meaning it is entirely unclear whether Hungary and Slovakia will still need to take in refugees after the end of this month.

Further, if the European Commission were to push forward with infringement procedures against Hungary and Slovakia, other EU countries would find themselves on the spot as well. Only one country – Malta – has fully fulfilled its obligations to relocate refugees.

Finally, there is the situation on the ground. Living conditions for refugees in Hungary are so abysmal that the German authorities recently decided not to send back any asylum seekers. In fact, Prime Minister Victor Orbán has done everything he can to make his country as unwelcoming as possible. At the same time, he cynically argues that it is pointless to force his country to take in refugees as they would in any case leave for Germany at the first opportunity.

Why then is the European court’s decision such a big deal? Beyond any concrete repercussions on housing refugees, it has important political implications in two areas: first of all, the judges confirmed the notion that in a refugee crisis, solidarity is owed toward both the people fleeing war and the countries taking them in. “Solidarity is not a one-way street,” as the European Commission for Migration, Dimitris Avramopoulos, said.

Secondly, the court also ruled on the institutional basis of the 2015 decision. It confirmed that the EU Commission had the right to propose a binding relocation mechanism, and that EU ministers could decide by majority vote – against a minority consisting of several eastern European countries – to accept that proposal.

Governments in Hungary and Poland, but also in Slovakia and the Czech Republic, very much believe in national sovereignty; they would prefer that each country decide for itself how to deal with refugees and immigration, and only feel obligated to abide by unanimous EU-level decisions. Institutionally, they favor intergovernmentalism over the EU’s méthode communautaire, which gives the European Commission a central role in decision-making.

A Shifted Balance

Of course, western European governments don’t like to be outvoted either, and more than one of them sees the European Commission as power hungry. But with the United Kingdom’s decision to leave the EU, the balance of power within the bloc has shifted.

The UK, a major western EU country that was always very much attached to national sovereignty, is out of the picture. At the same time, other long-time member states like France and Germany are pushing for more integration to keep the EU from falling apart. Unanimity, German Chancellor Angela Merkel said in an interview, was important on foreign policy issues. She added that on other matters, it was equally important to accept that “sometimes we will find ourselves outvoted, though of course no country likes that.”

It is widely expected that the new Berlin government, following elections on September 24, will work with France on significant EU reforms to strengthen the eurozone and build up European defense. Countries like Poland and Hungary, which neither want to join the euro nor wish to see their influence in the EU dwindle even further, will likely oppose many of these measures.

Yet they may find themselves outmaneuvered if core countries decide to push forward without them. Under EU law, it is possible to have “reinforced cooperation” on particular issues, effectively allowing coalitions of the willing. Even talking about this model of integration puts enormous pressure on the skeptics.

Grudging acceptance does not, however, make for a happy family, and relations between East and West could end up even more strained. EU Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker now frequently speaks about how much he worries about this rift. “It’s not a catastrophe, but it’s a reality that we have seen happen over the past two years: the more we get into issues of substance, the more we see East and West differ in their sensibilities.”

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© REUTERS/Alkis Konstantinidis

It was an agreement that the European Union, and Germany in particular, hailed as the key to solving the refugee crisis: the EU would give Turkey a total of 6 billion euros and visa-free travel for its citizens, in return for Ankara blocking refugees or migrants attempting to cross into Greece from its territory.

The reality has been different: Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has used the pact as his personal bargaining chip over his EU counterparts. His threats to scrap the deal were originally leverage in securing visa waivers for Turkish citizens traveling in the EU. Now, however, the rhetoric has grown increasingly dramatic and the threats more menacing, after EU countries Germany and the Netherlands, in the run-up to Turkey’s constitutional referendum in April, banned some pro-Erdogan rallies by Turkish ministers on their soil.

In the eyes of EU bureaucrats, the agreement is still a success story. In fact, over the past few months the EU representatives who helped compose the agreement have been touring across Greece, patting themselves on the back over how well their plan has worked. They are still vowing to speed up the asylum decision process significantly.

They do indeed have some reason to be satisfied. Only around 30 people a day have been arriving on the Greek islands so far this year, a significant drop from 2015, where an average of 2,200 people arrived on a daily basis. Turkey has also agreed that migrants who make it to the Greek islands but whose asylum applications had been rejected would be readmitted back into Turkey.

But because of the agreement, some 14,000 unlucky refugees who have arrived in Greece since the deal went into effect have been stuck in a seemingly eternal limbo: They are essentially kept as prisoners on the Greek islands until their asylum cases are processed. And despite the 600 million euros the EU earmarked for the UNHCR, NGOs, and the Greek government to rectify the situation, hundreds of people are still living in summer tents.

Amnesty International and other human rights organizations have called the migration agreement illegal and inhumane, violating both EU and Greek laws. Doctors Without Borders psychologists in Lesbos saw the number of patients with symptoms of anxiety and depression more than double, and they also witnessed more cases of self-harm and attempted suicide.

Three refugees in the Moria camp burned coal in their tents in an effort to warm up last January; it had been snowing and raining non-stop for days. They were poisoned by the carbon monoxide.

Official reports also conclude that some asylum-seekers have been sent back to Turkey without a chance to apply for asylum in Greece. The Greek authorities were under immense pressure to implement the terms of the agreement successfully, and these reports indicate that many people were deported without due process.

Even Syrian refugees have found themselves in jail and awaiting deportation to Turkey, despite appeals. The country’s highest court will soon hear the case of a 21-year-old Syrian man held in the Lesbos jail, and much is at stake. If the man is returned to Turkey, it is quite likely that he would then be deported back to Syria.

A Safe Country?

In addition to these issues, the EU has failed to answer a question central to the deal: Is Turkey really a safe third country? After all, last year was one of Turkey’s most turbulent: 30 terror attacks, an attempted coup by parts of the military, a crackdown on Kurds, and active participation in the Syria war.

Until now, some 1,000 migrants and refugees have been deported back to Turkey, and that number is considered too low for EU bureaucrats – they are looking for ways to increase it. They found the solution: those waiting for a decision on appeals will be held in detention centers, and another 200 Greek police officers will be transferred to the islands. The goal is to limit the number of asylum-seekers fleeing to the mainland to continue their journey. In addition, more EU border officers will be stationed in the Macedonian and the Albanian borders, to prevent smuggling across the Western route.

Greece’s next move will be to change the law to recognize Turkey as a “safe” country also for vulnerable groups; the Ministry of Migration is preparing corresponding legislation. If it passes, even families with children, religious minorities, disabled, LGBT, and torture victims, won’t be protected by the Greek law anymore and will be deported to Turkey.

There is a wildcard that the EU appeared to have misjudged: Erdogan’s penchant for power and his geopolitical strategies were not taken into consideration when the deal was signed. Turkey’s deteriorating relations with European countries have put the EU in a seemingly untenable position, and critics argue the balance of power rests clearly with Ankara. Yet Erdogan’s government has been threatening to abandon the agreement and open the floodgates for a year and has not followed through – despite several ultimatums, and the fact that Turkish citizens still don’t have visa-free travel within Europe. It seems Ankara has a stake in seeing the agreement succeed, as well.

Still, if Turkey makes good on its threats, Greece will once again find itself with thousands of new arrivals, only they will not be allowed to continue on to Western Europe and will be stuck in Greece. And if this scenario plays out, Brussels will likely hastily throw more millions to cash-strapped, crisis-ridden Greece and conveniently believe they have solved the issue once more. But more money will not help.

As of last December, the EU had only resettled some 6,200 of the over 62,000 refugees stuck in Greece. That has weakened European officials’ credibility and raised anger in Athens.

And what’s more, the EU cannot seem to see the forest through the trees: Brussels has failed to address the problem of migration at its very root. War, conflict, and extreme poverty still face millions in Turkey and their home countries, and the reasons to flee are not subsiding. The European dream is still a shining beacon for many, and it should not come as a  surprise that at any moment, the number of people looking for a better life will increase. It’s time Europe stops buying into the far-right’s fear-mongering ways and bowing to populist pressure. Building an iron curtain around the continent isn’t a solution, and history shows that migration ends up being a benefit, not a burden.

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© REUTERS/Antonio Parrinello

If Europe’s current refugee and migration crisis has made anything clear over the past two years, it is this: the European Union urgently needs a credible, effective policy on asylum and border management that respects existing international and EU refugee law and controls external land and sea borders. It must treat asylum seekers respectfully while deterring irregular migration and undermining the business model of smugglers; it must save lives and respect the fundamental ethical norm of the rule of rescue, not push individuals in need into danger, which is at the heart of the UN Refugee Convention (and its key article 33 on no pushbacks).

The EU-Turkey agreement on refugees in the Aegean adopted on March 18, 2016, contains the elements of such a policy – but to serve as a good model it has to be fully implemented. The agreement is based on existing EU laws on asylum and on the principles of the UN Refugee Convention. It commits the EU to helping improve conditions for refugees in Turkey (the country in the world hosting the largest number of refugees today) with the most generous contribution the EU has ever made for refugees in any country in the world. It also makes improving the work and quality of the Turkish asylum service a matter of direct interest to the EU: only if Turkey has a functioning asylum system can it be considered a safe third country. Finally and crucially, it foresees substantial resettlement of refugees in an orderly manner from Turkey once flows of irregular arrivals in the Aegean are reduced. The fact that this last provision has not yet been implemented seriously does not make it any less important to the overall logic of the agreement.

Even without full implementation, the agreement has produced a dramatic and immediate impact on refugee movements in the eastern Mediterranean. Crossings in the Aegean Sea fell from 115,000 in the first two months of the year to 3,300 in June and July. The number of people who drowned in the Aegean fell from 366 people in the first three months of the year to seven between May and July. This was achieved without pushing refugees to take other, more dangerous routes (the people arriving in Southern Italy this year were from African countries). And there have not been any mass expulsions from Greece either, something NGOs had feared would happen. In fact, more people had been sent back from Greece to Turkey in the three months preceding the agreement (967) than in the ten months since it was concluded (777).

It is obvious, however, that the EU has no current plan or credible strategy for the central Mediterranean, and this presents a huge risk. The status quo is clearly unacceptable from a humanitarian point of view: in 2016 an unprecedented number of people (more than 4400) drowned there. It is also politically explosive, lending ammunition to those on the far-right across Europe (from Geert Wilders in the Netherlands to Marine Le Pen in France and the Alternative für Deutschland in Germany). They argue that the only way to control migration to Europe is by abolishing the Schengen open borders regime and restoring border controls within the European Union. The lack of a coherent EU strategy has led some to suggest looking to Australia for inspiration, praising a model whereby anyone reaching the EU by sea should be denied the right to even apply for asylum in the EU and be returned to North Africa. This would amount to the EU turning its back on the Refugee Convention, initiating an existential crisis for the UNHCR and global policy on asylum.

A humane and effective border and asylum policy is indeed possible, and it does not involve emulating the Australian model. The first step requires implementing the EU-Turkey agreement in full. The second step would involve applying the right lessons to the central Mediterranean as well. Both would require the EU to set up new structures, including credible EU asylum missions and instruments to resettle refugees, among others. Both depend on Greece and Italy persuading other EU countries that the challenge they face is a European one requiring innovative European solutions.

Following Through

Nearly a year after it was signed into action, the EU-Turkey agreement remains at risk – and that despite its successes so far. This is because of inadequate implementation.

On average, fewer than one hundred people have been returned to Turkey each month; many people who arrived on the Aegean islands have remained struck there in limbo for extended periods of time, while the number of new arrivals has been some one hundred a day on average in recent months.

All this creates a realistic scenario for failure. Greek authorities, under pressure and without an answer for islanders who see Lesbos and Chios becoming a European Nauru (the Pacific island where Australia sends people who arrive by boat), might move larger numbers of people from the Aegean islands to the mainland. That would again lead to rising numbers of people crossing the Aegean. Once larger groups are moved to the Greek mainland, the humanitarian situation for refugees there, which is already bad, will deteriorate further. We would see the populist-led calls to build a stronger wall north of Greece multiply.

Already now, the number one topic of conversation among migrants stranded on the Greek mainland is the cost of getting smuggled across the Balkan route, either via Macedonia or Bulgaria. It is hard to imagine Greece making a major effort to stop people from leaving the country if Greeks feel the EU has abandoned them. The weak Macedonian reception and asylum system might then collapse within weeks, once more people cross the border. The western Balkans would turn into a battleground for migrants, smugglers, border guards, soldiers, and vigilante groups, destabilizing an already fragile region.

If this scenario played out, it would be a serious blow to European leaders like Angela Merkel, who argue that it is possible to have a humane and effective EU policy on border management while respecting the Refugee Convention. It would also be a blow to already tense EU-Turkish relations. What is needed now is the right implementation strategy.

The EU should appoint a special representative for the implementation of the EU-Turkey agreement – a former prime minister or former foreign minister with the experience and authority to address urgent implementation issues on the ground. To preserve the agreement, the European Commission and Turkey should address all concerns raised about Turkey as a safe third country for those who should be returned from Greece. Such concerns can be addressed. As the UNHCR noted on March 18, 2016, everything depends on serious implementation:

“People being returned to Turkey and needing international protection must have a fair and proper determination of their claims, and within a reasonable time. Assurances against refoulement, or forced return, must be in place. Reception and other arrangements need to be readied in Turkey before anyone is returned from Greece. People determined to be needing international protection need to be able to enjoy asylum, without discrimination, in accordance with accepted international standards, including effective access to work, health care, education for children, and, as necessary, social assistance.”

Turkey would need to present a concrete proposal on how to ensure – and how to make transparent – that it is fulfilling the conditions set by EU law to be a credible safe third country for refugees of any origin that Greece might return, whether they are Pakistani, Afghan, or Syrian. It would need to guarantee – with more assistance from the EU and UNCHR, if necessary – that there are sufficient asylum case workers, translators, and legal aid in place to provide an efficient asylum process. There would need to be full transparency surrounding what is happening to each and every person returned as well. Given the small number of people concerned, this is all doable.

At the same time, the EU should send a European asylum mission to the Greek islands, including at least two hundred case workers able to make binding decisions on asylum claims (which would require an invitation by the Greek government, changes in Greek law, and assurances that any decision made by such a mission could be suspended by a chief Greek legal officer). Those who are granted protection should then be relocated across the EU immediately; all others would be sent back to Turkey. The principle behind an EU mission would be obvious: In times of crisis, there is a need for a substantial number of case workers, interpreters, and reception officers to ensure quality standards for assessing protection requests with speed where most asylum requests are submitted. It would be unfair to blame Greece or any other country for being unable to deal rapidly with asylum requests of the tens of thousands of people; it would be unreasonable for Greece not to ask for such a European mission. Ultimately it is a matter of political will on the part of the EU and Turkey to deal with the few thousand asylum seekers now on the Aegean islands, in line with international norms and EU directives for their mutual benefit.

Adapting the Agreement

So far it has proven difficult to send a sufficient number of EU asylum caseworkers to Greece. At the same time, there are still no decent reception conditions for the relatively small number of people who have arrived on the islands since April 2016. These challenges cast serious doubt on proposals to slow illegal migration to Italy by setting up reception centers somewhere in North Africa; as some EU politicians have suggested, everyone who reaches Italy would be taken to these centers to have their asylum claims processed. This is sometimes presented as a model inspired by Australia, which puts everyone who arrives by sea in camps on the Pacific island of Nauru or on Manus Island in Papua New Guinea. In fact, asylum seekers held in Nauru in recent years have been forced to wait many years for their applications to be decided.

Conditions of detention were and remain intentionally harsh to deter further arrivals. And once asylum is granted, it remains unclear where refugees might go (recently the US offered to help out and promised to accept a large number of people moved to these islands by Australia; it remains unclear whether this will actually happen). It is important to note that Nauru never hosted more than a thousand people at any given time. The notion that the EU might outsource the detention of tens of thousands of asylum seekers to camps across North Africa for long periods and under similar conditions is surely a recipe for failure.

So how might the EU reduce the number of arrivals – and deaths – in the central Mediterranean? The key lies in fast processing of asylum applications for anyone who arrives, and in fast returns of those whose claims are rejected to their countries of origin. Both of these tasks should become European responsibilities. Anyone not granted asylum should be returned to his or her country of origin. Prioritizing such returns should become the central issue of negotiations with African countries of origin. On the other hand, those who are granted asylum should be relocated across the EU to support Italy and Greece and replace the inadequate Dublin system (the notion that Dutch or German case officers would decide which refugees remain in Greece or Italy would obviously not be acceptable to these countries).

What would be the likely impact of such a policy on arrivals? It is very likely that these would fall sharply.

Nigerians were the largest group of arrivals in 2016, and the majority would be unlikely to risk their lives crossing the deadly Sahara, unstable Libya, and the central Mediterranean, and spending thousands of Euros on smugglers when the likelihood of being returned to Nigeria would be upwards of seventy percent (which is the current rate of rejection of Nigerian asylum applications in the EU).

As noted, ensuring that Nigeria, Senegal and other countries take back their nationals arriving in Italy after an agreed date should be the chief priority in talks between the EU and Nigeria – similar to the commitment Turkey made to take back without delay people who arriving in Greece after March 20, 2016. This would require that an EU asylum mission in Italy is able to process all claims within weeks. Rapid readmission would bring down the number of people who stay in the EU after their applications are rejected. In this way, the number of irregular arrivals becomes manageable – with less business for smugglers and far fewer deaths at sea. The aim might be to reduce the number of all irregular arrivals by sea to below 100,000 (for an EU of over 500 million people) in 2017. Such a goal is realistic: It is, after all, the average number of irregular arrivals into the entire EU 2009-13.

European leaders could thus demonstrate to their electorates that it is possible to control external sea borders without undermining the refugee convention or treating those who arrive inhumanely to deter new arrivals. European leaders should simultaneously push forward the global debate on orderly transfers of refugees through resettlement. The only way to do so is to lead by example, building up EU capacity for resettlement as well boosting the UNHCR’s capacity to do more. Coalitions of willing EU states should commit to resettle a significant number of vulnerable refugees each year.

In recent decades, resettlement has never reached more than 100,000 a year across the planet, and of these the US took the lion’s share. Until now European states have not built up the bureaucratic machinery for large-scale resettlement. For this reason, pushing the EU to fully implement the resettlement provisions in the Aegean agreement (point 4) is vital and deserves to be an advocacy priority for human rights NGOs and refugee rights defenders.

In the face of rising anti-refugee sentiment across the world, it will take a strong coalition of countries to protect the Refugee Convention. Such a coalition requires governments that are able to win elections on the platform that a humane asylum policy and effective border control can be combined and can even reinforce each other. Such a policy needs to be based on core principles: no pushbacks; no Nauru; discouraging irregular passage through fast readmission and fast asylum processes; expansion of refugee resettlement programs; and serious financial help to host countries elsewhere. If this happens, lessons from the EU agreement with Turkey – the only plan in recent years that dramatically reduced the numbers of people arriving without changing EU refugee law – might help develop a blueprint for protecting refugee rights in an age of anxiety. For Europe and refugees, the stakes could not be higher.

Read more in the Berlin Policy Journal App – January/February 2017 issue.

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© Goethe Institute/Bernhard Ludewig

Amer El Akel, a young Syrian artist, reads aloud from the endless official mail he has received since arriving in Germany as a refugee. They are letters concerning his legal status in the country but also from service providers like Deutsche Telekom, containing pages and pages of tiny print. In stilted German, he stumbles over virtually every other word.

His performance piece is both an amusing comment on German bureaucracy and a serious exploration of the sense of alienation experienced by refugees. It featured in a series of events called “Damascus in Exile” staged by the Goethe Institute in a tiny empty shop on Rosa-Luxemburg-Strasse in central Berlin.

The shop is a far cry from the original Goethe Institute in Damascus. Located in the unprepossessing but sizeable former embassy of the German Democratic Republic, it was an important cultural center until it was forced to close in 2012. Though not immune from the censorship of Bashar al-Assad’s draconian regime (programs had to be approved by the Culture Ministry), it was a place of learning with an impressive library and a lively program that attracted many Syrian artists.

In 2012, the German Foreign Office advised German nationals to leave Damascus as the civil war escalated. Goethe Institute staff were let go on full pay for a year in anticipation they would be able to return within months. “We thought we would be back soon,” says Johannes Ebert, Secretary General of the Goethe Institute.

Since then, four years have passed, and there is still no prospect of the war ending. What began as a movement for freedom and democracy has developed into a proxy war with global powers supporting opposing sides. While Germany has taken in an estimated 600,000 Syrian refugees, its role in the region is limited to humanitarian assistance. Though Chancellor Angela Merkel has said that addressing the causes of flight is a central pillar of her refugee policy, Germany is watching the war helplessly from the sidelines.

Among those who have found refuge in Germany are many Syrian artists, writers, musicians, performers, theatre directors, and film-makers.

“Just like Being at Home”

The idea of setting up a “pop-up” site was in a sense outside the mandate of the Goethe Institute, which only receives government funding for its work abroad.

“We thought we could make an exception,” says Pelican Mourad, who was program assistant at the institute in Damascus. Part of her concern was that extremist organizations are trying to recruit newcomers. “We needed to counter that by creating a space for free-thinkers and artists,” she says.

Artists who took part ranged from young talents like Akel to established names such as the clarinetist and composer Kinan Azmeh, who is scheduled to perform at Hamburg’s vast new Elbphilharmonie with Yo-Yo Ma in January. “We worried he would object to the tiny space” in the Berlin shop, where enthusiasts spilled out onto the street during his concert, Mourad says. “But he said it was just like being at home in Syria.”

Many of the works dealt with the civil war. Liwaa Yazji’s harrowing film “Haunted” describes the horrific living conditions faced by those forced to flee their bomb-devastated homes and desperately seeking shelter in war-ruined towns. Others addressed the lot of the refugee: Daniel Carsenty’s film “After Spring Comes Fall” tells the story of a young Kurdish woman who flees Syria and arrives in Berlin illegally, where she is tracked down by the Syrian secret service.

At a podium discussion, participants discussed what culture can achieve for refugees. Theatre director Mohammed Al-Attar described the difficulties of trying to work with people who are cold or hungry. “They have to eat, they have to have shelter,” he says. “Then comes cultural work.”

That is where the Goethe Institute comes in. It brings culture to refugee areas in Lebanon and Jordan with “idea boxes” that can be transported in a container and tour the region with books and films translated into Arabic. Programs have included acrobatics and stilt-walking as well as soccer for traumatized children in Lebanon.

Increasingly, the institute is putting expertise gleaned in the Middle East to good use at home. It has received some large donations, including one from the Japan Art Association, allowing it to operate in Germany even without government funding, Ebert says. Materials that may seem of secondary value in the field, such as an app that teaches basic German in eight weeks, can prove crucial in Germany – as Akel’s struggles with the language of bureaucracy show.

“Part of the refugee experience is boredom,” Ebert says. “Once basic requirements are met, the need for culture and education follows very closely.

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