Democracy

From my hotel room in Budapest at the weekend, I followed the images of Germany’s Willkommenskultur, the country’s policy and manner of welcoming refugees and migrants. Refugees who a few hours earlier did not know what would happen next were received warmly. I am pleased that these people no longer have to persevere in Budapest’s Keleti railway station or at the processing centres in Bicske and Röszke – they have now been granted permission to travel via Austria to Germany.

From my hotel room in Budapest at the weekend, I followed the images of Germany’s Willkommenskultur, the country’s policy and manner of welcoming refugees and migrants. They have now been granted permission to travel via Austria to Germany.

For four days now I have been in Budapest, a witness to a drama that I would have considered impossible in an EU capital not long ago.

For four days now I have been in Budapest, a witness to a drama that I would have considered impossible in an EU capital not long ago.

At the GLOBSEC 2015 security conference organised recently in Bratislava, Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico and Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán concordantly rejected a European Union proposal to introduce a quota system for allocating refugees arriving in Europe from Africa and the Middle East to individual countries. The method in which the politicians formulated their disapproval, however, attested to the fact that they do not have a problem with quotas as such, but that they do not want “unwanted” foreigners to enter their countries. But whereas in the case of the Hungarian prime minister the negative position on quotas could be interpreted as a reaction to the wave of migrants entering his country from Serbia, including ethnic Albanians fleeing socio-economic problems in Kosovo, in the case of Robert Fico this was a statement of position pro futuro without any connection to the present situation in Slovakia - essentially a preventive warning that foreigners (refugees, migrants) are not welcome here.

Since 2010 Fidesz has managed to win all parliamentary by-elections leading up to a resounding victory of Viktor Orbán at the parliamentary elections in April 2014 and easily won municipal elections in October 2014. Recently things have changed dramatically.

"We’d like to retain Hungary as Hungary", says Victor Orbán in January 2015. Xenophobia is significant in his country. How a multicultural and multi-ethnic society became a mono-ethnic and closed one.

The growth of contemporary European populism represents one of the most topical problems that liberal democratic states on the continent must face. To understand the nature of the success of populists on a general level and in individual countries, it is useful to examine the causes of this phenomenon during the period from the outbreak of the economic crisis to the present. The event is dedicated to a comparative analysis of individual European countries where populism in on the rise.

The Heinrich Böll Foundation, the Green European Foundation (GEF), the Ecopolis Foundation and the Federation of Young European Greens (FYEG) cordially invite you to apply for the Congress of Young Europeans in Budapest.