Social Europe

politics, economy and employment & labour

  • Themes
    • Strategic autonomy
    • War in Ukraine
    • European digital sphere
    • Recovery and resilience
  • Publications
    • Books
    • Dossiers
    • Occasional Papers
    • Research Essays
    • Brexit Paper Series
  • Podcast
  • Videos
  • Newsletter

On the EU’s Belarus border, security and fundamental rights collide

Weronika Grzebalska 13th September 2021

Weronika Grzebalska argues that Lukashenka’s thrashing around in eastern Europe forces progressives to offer a positive alternative on security.

security,border,Poland,Belarus,Lukashenka
‘The limit of humanity’—the Poland-Belarus border post at Wrocław (DarSzach/Shutterstock.com)

All is not quiet on the eastern front. This summer, the European Union’s external border has been put to the test by a wave of irregular migration, directed at Lithuania, Latvia and Poland by the regime of AlyaksandrLukashenka in Belarus. In this moment of crisis, dangerous emergency measures are being implemented by governments in the name of security.

Those to the left of the political centre try to win the hearts and minds of the public by shifting attention from hybrid threats to fundamental rights and humanitarian considerations. Yet by downplaying national security, they virtuously retreat into the political backseat. Is central- and eastern Europe fated to right-wing securitisation—or is a positive, left-wing national-security agenda possible in the region?

Act of retaliation

The weaponisation of migration by Belarus came as an act of retaliation for EU sanctions imposed on the regime after its hijacking of a Ryanair plane to arrest an opposition journalist. In May, Lukashenka vowed to allow drugs and illegal migrants to flow into the EU. In what followed, Lithuania recorded over 4,000 newcomers this year, compared with just 81 in 2020. Belarusian state-owned tourist companies have made money co-ordinating the migrant flow, with Lukashenka’s security officers filmed pushing people through the EU border.

While state-organised migration is a new challenge for the region, there is nothing novel about Lukashenka’s hybrid activities or those emanating from the Kremlin. From cyber-attacks on essential Estonian institutions, through the annexation of Crimea, all the way to disinformation campaigns smearing Poland and Lithuania for supporting Belarusian dissidents fleeing violent crackdowns, this is an emergent hotspot on the EU’s periphery.


Our job is keeping you informed!


Subscribe to our free newsletter and stay up to date with the latest Social Europe content. We will never send you spam and you can unsubscribe anytime.

Sign up here

Given this geopolitical context, it is not surprising that Baltic and Polish political leaders narrate the crisis predominantly through the lens of (inter)national security—as an act of ‘hybrid warfare’ on the EU’s border, aiming to wreak domestic and international instability. Those in power rightfully underscore the responsibility of the state to ensure the safety of its citizens. Their security bias makes them however more prone to sacrifice democratic standards in the process.

All three states swiftly reinforced border protection—a razor-wire fence being one dramatised element—and enacted controversial, extra-legal emergency measures. These measures have restricted journalists’ access to the border, leading to a de facto state monopoly on information. All three states have also seen a temporary legalisation of migrant pushbacks, as well as stark restrictions on the rights of asylum-seekers. In Latvia and Poland, border standoffs with Belarusian forces left dozens of people trapped at the border for weeks.

In its own way, the crisis has confronted eastern Europe with a larger, pan-European dilemma—how can democratic states defend themselves while marrying security with fundamental rights? Across Europe, the answer tends to increasingly tilt towards security, with the EU’s migration and border policy significantly hardening since the 2015 ‘refugee crisis’.

Humanitarian concerns

Much as across the rest of the EU, rights-based non-governmental organisations in Poland and the Baltics tried to balance this securitising drift by shifting public attention to humanitarian concerns and the restrictions on civil liberties. They publicised personal stories of migrants, appealed to public emotions and sounded the alarm about breaches of fundamental rights.

In the Baltics, these critical voices inform public and parliamentary debates yet do not undermine the otherwise strong political consensus on national security embodied in the doctrine of ‘total defence’. Poland stands in stark contrast, with the border crisis falling hostage to political polarisation between the illiberal right and the absolutist left.  

Nowhere has this dead-end polarisation been more visible than in the border territory near Usnarz Górny, where around 30 people are trapped in a standoff between Belarusian and Polish border guards, unable to enter EU territory or to withdraw into Belarus. The illiberal government has enjoyed seizing this crisis moment—playing hardline defenders while deliberately not incorporating other political and civil-society actors in their crisis response. The opposition has played along, assuming the role of righteous critic of any and all government actions.

To be sure, NGOs’ support for the migrants in their plight has been laudable and the watchdog activity of compassionate journalists invaluable. The left is in the right in arguing that Poland, as with many EU frontline states today, breaks international legal standards, embodied in the Geneva convention, through pushbacks and restricted asylum procedures. They are an important voice of moral conviction defending people instrumentalised by a rogue leader and left vulnerable by EU border-security measures.

Carefully weighed

Still, there is a significant tradeoff. The more the left stands as the virtuous few against the morally corrupt majority, the less capable it is of seeing that the country faces real security challenges which need to be carefully weighed when designing a response.

As polarisation intensified, one progressive Polish MP attempted to run through the border to reach migrants, disregarding possible repercussions from Belarus. Opposition figures followed suit, calling the uniformed services a ‘pack of dogs’ and framing the Polish response as a larger threat than Lukashenka. Finally, paying homage to the idea of open borders, a group of activists began destroying the border fence at night—an act which did not go unnoticed in pro-Kremlin media.


We need your support


Social Europe is an independent publisher and we believe in freely available content. For this model to be sustainable, however, we depend on the solidarity of our readers. Become a Social Europe member for less than 5 Euro per month and help us produce more articles, podcasts and videos. Thank you very much for your support!

Become a Social Europe Member

The more radical those on the left became in their responses, the less they seemed to get things right for those they wished to protect. In a recent poll, almost 65 per cent of Poles held a negative view of how the opposition handled the border crisis and 85 per cent criticised the activists’ attempt to destroy the border fence. Defending fundamental rights while refusing to engage in a serious debate on how to protect the country only gets the left so far. To assert its principles effectively, the left needs its own positive stance on national security.

Designing a left-wing national-security agenda seems futile, given the field is dominated by the right. Yet without the left rising to this challenge, we cannot hope for a national-security policy balanced by fundamental rights. So what could such an agenda for eastern Europe look like?

First, any programme should start by acknowledging the region faces real security challenges and that some stem from the hybrid activities of rogue foreign leaders, not just the left’s usual suspects: global inequalities, neoliberalism or right-wing populism. Secondly, having a positive programme means going beyond saying what the left opposes and laying out what exactly it intends to do for our states and fellow citizens in turbulent times.

Thirdly, given the left’s principled anti-militarist stance, this positive agenda should focus on building security through non-military means. While increasing defence spending or using emergency law may sometimes be necessary, ‘hybrid interference’ operates through targeting and exploiting failing institutions, polarisation and low public trust, inequality and marginalisation. And the best line of hybrid defence turns out to be what the left has advocated all along—an effective social democracy premised on socio-economic equality, human rights and the rule of law.

Once the east-European left promotes a positive national-security programme, its principled defence of civil liberties and humanitarian standards may finally seem convincing to voters.

This is a joint publication by Social Europe and IPS-Journal

Weronika Grzebalska
Weronika Grzebalska

Weronika Grzebalska is a sociologist, an assistant professor at the Institute of Political Studies of the Polish Academy of Sciences and a RethinkCEE fellow at the German Marshall Fund of the US. Her work focuses on (para)militarism, security, right-wing politics and gender politics in central Europe in the neoliberal era.

You are here: Home / Politics / On the EU’s Belarus border, security and fundamental rights collide

Most Popular Posts

Visentini,ITUC,Qatar,Fight Impunity,50,000 Visentini, ‘Fight Impunity’, the ITUC and QatarFrank Hoffer
Russian soldiers' mothers,war,Ukraine The Ukraine war and Russian soldiers’ mothersJennifer Mathers and Natasha Danilova
IGU,documents,International Gas Union,lobby,lobbying,sustainable finance taxonomy,green gas,EU,COP ‘Gaslighting’ Europe on fossil fuelsFaye Holder
Schengen,Fortress Europe,Romania,Bulgaria Romania and Bulgaria stuck in EU’s second tierMagdalena Ulceluse
income inequality,inequality,Gini,1 per cent,elephant chart,elephant Global income inequality: time to revise the elephantBranko Milanovic

Most Recent Posts

Pakistan,flooding,floods Flooded Pakistan, symbol of climate injusticeZareen Zahid Qureshi
reality check,EU foreign policy,Russia Russia’s invasion of Ukraine: a reality check for the EUHeidi Mauer, Richard Whitman and Nicholas Wright
permanent EU investment fund,Recovery and Resilience Facility,public investment,RRF Towards a permanent EU investment fundPhilipp Heimberger and Andreas Lichtenberger
sustainability,SDGs,Finland Embedding sustainability in a government programmeJohanna Juselius
social dialogue,social partners Social dialogue must be at the heart of Europe’s futureClaes-Mikael Ståhl

Other Social Europe Publications

front cover scaled Towards a social-democratic century?
Cover e1655225066994 National recovery and resilience plans
Untitled design The transatlantic relationship
Women Corona e1631700896969 500 Women and the coronavirus crisis
sere12 1 RE No. 12: Why No Economic Democracy in Sweden?

Foundation for European Progressive Studies Advertisement

The winter issue of the Progressive Post magazine from FEPS is out!

The sequence of recent catastrophes has thrust new words into our vocabulary—'polycrisis', for example, even 'permacrisis'. These challenges have multiple origins, reinforce each other and cannot be tackled individually. But could they also be opportunities for the EU?

This issue offers compelling analyses on the European health union, multilateralism and international co-operation, the state of the union, political alternatives to the narrative imposed by the right and much more!


DOWNLOAD HERE

Hans Böckler Stiftung Advertisement

The macroeconomic effects of re-applying the EU fiscal rules

Against the background of the European Commission's reform plans for the Stability and Growth Pact (SGP), this policy brief uses the macroeconometric multi-country model NiGEM to simulate the macroeconomic implications of the most relevant reform options from 2024 onwards. Next to a return to the existing and unreformed rules, the most prominent options include an expenditure rule linked to a debt anchor.

Our results for the euro area and its four biggest economies—France, Italy, Germany and Spain—indicate that returning to the rules of the SGP would lead to severe cuts in public spending, particularly if the SGP rules were interpreted as in the past. A more flexible interpretation would only somewhat ease the fiscal-adjustment burden. An expenditure rule along the lines of the European Fiscal Board would, however, not necessarily alleviate that burden in and of itself.

Our simulations show great care must be taken to specify the expenditure rule, such that fiscal consolidation is achieved in a growth-friendly way. Raising the debt ceiling to 90 per cent of gross domestic product and applying less demanding fiscal adjustments, as proposed by the IMK, would go a long way.


DOWNLOAD HERE

ILO advertisement

Global Wage Report 2022-23: The impact of inflation and COVID-19 on wages and purchasing power

The International Labour Organization's Global Wage Report is a key reference on wages and wage inequality for the academic community and policy-makers around the world.

This eighth edition of the report, The Impact of inflation and COVID-19 on wages and purchasing power, examines the evolution of real wages, giving a unique picture of wage trends globally and by region. The report includes evidence on how wages have evolved through the COVID-19 crisis as well as how the current inflationary context is biting into real wage growth in most regions of the world. The report shows that for the first time in the 21st century real wage growth has fallen to negative values while, at the same time, the gap between real productivity growth and real wage growth continues to widen.

The report analysis the evolution of the real total wage bill from 2019 to 2022 to show how its different components—employment, nominal wages and inflation—have changed during the COVID-19 crisis and, more recently, during the cost-of-living crisis. The decomposition of the total wage bill, and its evolution, is shown for all wage employees and distinguishes between women and men. The report also looks at changes in wage inequality and the gender pay gap to reveal how COVID-19 may have contributed to increasing income inequality in different regions of the world. Together, the empirical evidence in the report becomes the backbone of a policy discussion that could play a key role in a human-centred recovery from the different ongoing crises.


DOWNLOAD HERE

ETUI advertisement

The EU recovery strategy: a blueprint for a more Social Europe or a house of cards?

This new ETUI paper explores the European Union recovery strategy, with a focus on its potentially transformative aspects vis-à-vis European integration and its implications for the social dimension of the EU’s socio-economic governance. In particular, it reflects on whether the agreed measures provide sufficient safeguards against the spectre of austerity and whether these constitute steps away from treating social and labour policies as mere ‘variables’ of economic growth.


DOWNLOAD HERE

Eurofound advertisement

Eurofound webinar: Making telework work for everyone

Since 2020 more European workers and managers have enjoyed greater flexibility and autonomy in work and are reporting their preference for hybrid working. Also driven by technological developments and structural changes in employment, organisations are now integrating telework more permanently into their workplace.

To reflect on these shifts, on 6 December Eurofound researchers Oscar Vargas and John Hurley explored the challenges and opportunities of the surge in telework, as well as the overall growth of telework and teleworkable jobs in the EU and what this means for workers, managers, companies and policymakers.


WATCH THE WEBINAR HERE

About Social Europe

Our Mission

Article Submission

Membership

Advertisements

Legal Disclosure

Privacy Policy

Copyright

Social Europe ISSN 2628-7641

Social Europe Archives

Search Social Europe

Themes Archive

Politics Archive

Economy Archive

Society Archive

Ecology Archive

Follow us

RSS Feed

Follow us on Facebook

Follow us on Twitter

Follow us on LinkedIn

Follow us on YouTube