Social Democrat Peter Struck, then German defense minister, said in 2002, “Germany’s security is being defended at the Hindu Kush today.” In retrospect, we must acknowledge he was right. For 20 years, NATO’s operation in Afghanistan has protected us from the problems we have been facing up close since the shameful summer troop withdrawal.
The EU’s external borders are now been besieged at Poland, Lithuania and Latvia.
Therefore, all three countries switched to the border protection model utilized by Hungary to protect the European Union in 2015. No thanks came from the EU then or now. On the contrary, the Central and Eastern European states that joined the EU in 2004 are being rebuked for their protectionist measures stemming from their accession obligations to the EU’s external borders, while glorifying Western non-governmental organizations (NGOs) which act as people smugglers in the Mediterranean through their efforts to bring migrants into the EU.
This lie, which increasingly defines the EU, must fail, and it is to be hoped that Poles, Hungarians and other Central and Eastern Europeans will be able to bring about this failure.
I am sending a message to the German Greens who are against securing borders and the uncontrolled influx of predominantly young people: It is about individual honesty after all, isn’t it? I took my share of this back in 2015, when I offered my parents’ small apartment, which is not being used, to the regional housing office to accommodate immigrants. In addition to four greetings in German, English, Arabic and Urdu, I also posted the text of the German Constitution in the living room.
The European Union’s raison d’être is based on the combined economic, social and security benefits of its equal members. Failure to fulfill these basic conditions will quickly lead to a perilous situation. It is possible that if Peter Struck were alive today, he would say: “The security of Germany and the European Union is ensured today at the EU’s external borders in Central and Eastern Europe.”
I would add here that Brussels must settle the bill for the necessary border protection instruments for those member states which were only performing a task for the common European community.
