{"id":4542,"date":"2023-10-11T10:03:53","date_gmt":"2023-10-11T09:03:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/visegradpost.com\/?p=4542"},"modified":"2025-06-09T10:05:06","modified_gmt":"2025-06-09T09:05:06","slug":"migration-conference-marks-key-moment-in-v4-alliance","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/visegradpost.com\/en\/2023\/10\/11\/migration-conference-marks-key-moment-in-v4-alliance\/","title":{"rendered":"Migration Conference Marks Key Moment in V4 Alliance"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Hungary<\/strong>\u00a0\u2013 On September 28, the Mathias Corvinus Collegium (MCC) hosted, at its Budapest campus, a panel discussion on the pressing subject of irregular migration to Europe. \u201cThe Decade of Movement: Challenges and Stakes of Irregular Mass Migration in Europe\u201d was a product of the Wac\u0142aw Felczak Institute of Polish-Hungarian Cooperation and the Budapest-based Migration Research Institute (MRI) and featured migration-focused scholars from several European countries.<\/p>\n<p>The event occurred at a critical moment for policy and politics in the V4 region. Less than a decade after the 2015 migration crisis,\u00a0irregular migration is again straining Europe\u2019s borders. Usual Mediterranean routes earn most of the headlines, but the\u00a0V4 countries, perhaps surprisingly, are burdened as well. Even Poland\u2019s northerly location and Hungary\u2019s well-protected frontiers have not prevented migration pressures.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThere are three solutions,\u201d asserted Witold Repetowicz, a Middle East expert at the War Studies University in Warsaw. \u201c[The] first solution is to pay ransom to these authoritarian regimes. The second is to provide effective protection for [the] border. But it means we act in a brutal way, because there is no other [method to enact this solution]\u2026Europe is not psychologically prepared for such a solution,\u201d he continued. \u201cThe third solution is to surrender.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>This is also a key inflection point for V4 cooperation on the issue.\u00a0Slovakia held parliamentary elections\u00a0immediately after the Felczak Institute-MRI conference. If top-finisher Robert Fico can form a government, Slovakia could provide key support to the recently isolated Hungary-Poland bloc, which has been critical of EU migrant-relocation schemes.<\/p>\n<p>The looming elections in Poland will dictate the V4 landscape for the next half-decade or longer. A government led by former Prime Minister and President of the European Council Donald Tusk would hamper V4 cooperation and likely isolate Hungary on migration policy (among other issues).<\/p>\n<p>Migration will play a direct role in the voting on October 15. Two of the four referendum questions posed to Polish voters relate to migration. One asks voters about this summer\u2019s EU Migration and Asylum Pact.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt is, of course, against the will of voters,\u201d said Felczak Institute-MRI panelist Tomasz Grzegorz Grosse, Professor of Politology, European Studies, and Political Science at Warsaw University. \u201cA majority of Poles reject the relocation mechanism, and without any relation to political preferences. A majority of voters\u2026it is like 70 percent of Poles, reject such an idea, because Poles believe they are not efficient. They don\u2019t address the problem. They don\u2019t stop [a] huge inflow of migrants to Europe. They only transfer problems from one country to another.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cFrom the practical approach\u2026the idea of the pact is just not realistic,\u201d added Dr. Gyula Mikolicz, the Hungarian government\u2019s Deputy Head of the Asylum Directorate.<\/p>\n<p>Political developments over the next month will immensely influence how the region responds to this fundamental issue. In the meantime, irregular migration flows will continue traverse Central Europe, en route to the Germanic destinations that surely will not rebuff them.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Hungary\u00a0\u2013 On September 28, the Mathias Corvinus Collegium (MCC) hosted, at its Budapest campus, a panel discussion on the pressing subject of irregular migration to Europe. \u201cThe Decade of Movement: Challenges and Stakes of Irregular Mass Migration in Europe\u201d was a product of the Wac\u0142aw Felczak Institute of Polish-Hungarian Cooperation and the Budapest-based Migration Research<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":4543,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"subtitle":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4542","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-news"],"acf":{"subtitle":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/visegradpost.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4542","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/visegradpost.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/visegradpost.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/visegradpost.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/visegradpost.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4542"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/visegradpost.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4542\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/visegradpost.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4543"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/visegradpost.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4542"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/visegradpost.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4542"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/visegradpost.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4542"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}