Regina Bruckner, 13. Oktober 2018, 12:00 derstandard.at
Die Zahl der ausländischen Entrepreneure in Österreich steigt. Nicht alle nehmen freiwillig diesen Weg
„Als Friseur musst du ein bisschen verrückt sein. Ich will wie Zohan sein.“ Noch ist Hasan Ali Duran nicht so weit, dass die Damenwelt vor dem eigenen Salon Schlange steht wie bei Zohan – seinem boratähnlichen Vorbild aus dem aberwitzigen Klamaukfilm Leg dich nicht mit Zohan an. Noch hat er Lehrjahre vor sich – bei Joel’s Dreamhair im fünften Wiener Gemeindebezirk. Bis er, wie sein vom US-Blödler Adam Sandler verkörpertes Vorbild, Frauen mit seinem „silky smooth“-Stil glücklich macht, wird der 19-Jährige wohl noch viele Haare vom Boden aufkehren. Schicke schwarze Maojacke, aschblondes, akkurat geschnittenes Haar, fein säuberlich gestutzter Schnurrbart, seine Profession trägt der junge Mann schon jetzt mit Stolz und Lausbubenhaftigkeit vor sich her. Kunden hält er mit überschwänglicher Geste und angedeuteter Eleganz die Tür zur Gasse auf – Zohan lässt grüßen.
Date: 06-10-2018
Source: Foreign Affairs By Alexander Betts and Paul Collier
The Importance of Being Sustainable
Three years since the start of the European refugee crisis, the continent’s politics are still convulsed by disagreements over migration. This is despite the sharp decline in the number of people crossing the Mediterranean into Europe—60,000 between January and August 2018, compared with over one million in 2015 and 350,000 in 2016. The crisis, in short, is not one of numbers but one of trust: European publics believe that migration is out of control and that their leaders have no real plan for handling it.
Among the new arrivals, some are refugees with no choice but to flee to Europe, while others are refugees who might have found protection closer to home. But many are aspirational migrants, leaving poor but not necessarily dangerous countries, such as Morocco and Tunisia, for better jobs and opportunities in the EU. Europe’s problem is that it currently has no effective way of distinguishing between these groups or of forcing EU member states to share responsibility for legitimate refugees. And with some countries, such as France and the United Kingdom, which return less than half of rejected asylum seekers, migrants without a real claim to asylum have an incentive to apply for it anyway, knowing they will probably be able to stay regardless of the bureaucratic outcome. The absence of rule of law in the admission of migrants, coupled with haphazard integration policies, undermines public confidence, in turn fueling a populist backlash with devastating consequences for both migrant welfare and European democracy. From Brexit to the rise of the populist Alternative for Germany party, divisions relating to migration have poisoned politics. Den Rest des Beitrags lesen »
Date: 20-09-2018
Source: The Economist: Charlemagne
Subject: Why Europe should focus on its growing interdependence with Africa
Sealing the Mediterranean will not work
IT IS a peculiarly modern habit to think of the Mediterranean Sea as a boundary. For over two millennia, civilisations bled across it and intermingled. Roman, Carthaginian, Moorish and Venetian empires expanded primarily along maritime routes. It took four days to get from imperial Rome to today’s Tunisia, but 11 days to reach Milan. The Sahara restricted contact between this Mediterranean Eurafrica and the regions to the south, but not entirely. A study of 22 skulls from Roman London found that four were African, for example. The medieval wealth of desert trading cities like Timbuktu and Agadez spoke of extensive north-south commerce. Later European colonialists penetrated, pillaged and parcelled up the continent; African troops fought in the trenches of the first world war; Europeans fought in Africa in the second.
Three subsequent events curbed this trans-Mediterraneanism. European powers left Africa with decolonisation; many African states sought to be neutral during the cold war; Europeans turned towards Asia’s booming markets as globalisation took hold. Tellingly, the geopolitical buzzword of the moment is “Eurasia”. Europe and Asia are integrating along old Silk Road routes, especially under China’s Belt and Road infrastructure splurge, yet “Eurafrica” remains relatively little discussed. Europe is too busy rushing into Asia’s arms to embrace a continent on its doorstep which may be even more significant in the long term.
Today’s waves of African migration are merely a prelude. Of the 2.2bn citizens added to the global population by 2050, 1.3bn will be Africans—about the size of China’s population today. And more of them will have the means to travel.Den Rest des Beitrags lesen »
Date: 10-09-2018
Source: The Economist
Subject: The anti-immigrant Sweden Democrats fail to achieve an electoral breakthrough
Their vote rose at the election on September 9th, but far less than they hoped
VOTERS have a funny habit of wrecking pundits’ storylines. The election on September 9th in Sweden was supposed to be a rebuke of the country’s generous refugee policies during the migrant crisis of 2015, and yet another signal that European populism is on the rise. The anti-immigrant Sweden Democrats were to become the country’s biggest or second-biggest party. The governing Social Democrats would fall victim to the malaise that afflicts centre-left parties around the world. And the Moderates and their bloc of centre-right parties, the Alliance, were expected to win a solid enough plurality to unseat Prime Minister Stefan Lofven and form the next government.
Instead, the Social Democrats won, or at least did not lose. Polls had shown them with as little as 23% of the vote, but they ended up with 28.4%, just 2.8 percentage points less than four years earlier and still the largest party by far. The Moderates’ 19.8% was also better than most recent polls, but still 3.5 percentage points less than in 2014, not a resounding mandate for their leader, Ulf Kristersson. The Sweden Democrats went from 12.9% to 17.6%—a hefty increase, but not enough for them to become the second-largest party, as they had hoped. The result fell well short of predictions; some pollsters had put them in the low twenties, and one or two had even suggested that they would end up as the largest party. A high turnout, partly driven by fears of just such a breakthrough, may have helped hold their share down. Den Rest des Beitrags lesen »
Daniel Gros is Director of the Brussels-based Center for European Policy Studies. He has worked for the International Monetary Fund, and served as an economic adviser to the European Commission, the European Parliament, and the French prime minister and finance minister. He is the editor of Economie Internationale and International Finance.
Even as the flow of refugees into Europe dwindles, anti-immigrant sentiment continues to rise, and is now being expressed violently in some areas. Economic factors probably play an important role, but to understand opposition to immigration also requires taking evolutionary psychology into account.
BRUSSELS – The rate at which migrants are arriving has diminished considerably almost everywhere in Europe since the huge inflows seen in 2015. Yet migration continues to dominate political debate throughout the European Union. This suggests that populist, anti-immigrant sentiment is not actually being driven by claims that mainstream politicians cannot defend Europe’s frontiers.
The decline in new arrivals to Europe began well before anti-immigrant political leaders took power in Italy or immigration pressure nearly toppled Germany’s ruling coalition. It is largely the result of EU efforts, such as the agreement with Turkey to prevent Syrians from crossing into Greece, its cooperation with Libyan militias, and the massive pressure it has placed on the Sahara transit states to close their borders. Thanks to these measures, Europe has become a de facto fortress against migration.
So why does immigration remain at the top of many Europeans’ minds? The answer could be economic: those who arrived in 2015-2016 have already created labor-market imbalances,with low-skill immigrants increasingly competing for jobs with low-skill citizens. And it is true that in most of Europe, hostility toward foreigners runs deepest among low-skill workers. Den Rest des Beitrags lesen »
Date: 30-08-2018
Source: The Economist
Subject: Tensions rise between Italy and the EU
Migrants and the economy are the flashpoints
AS ITALIANS trickled back to the cities from holidays on the coast and in the sun-baked countryside, the scene was set this week for what promises to be a difficult autumn. Over both the enduring problem of what to do about migrants arriving from north Africa and the even older problem of Italy’s dangerously anaemic economy, clashes with the EU are looming.
In the latest flexing of his muscles, Italy’s interior minister and leader of the Northern League, the pugnacious Matteo Salvini, kept more than a hundred asylum-seekers cooped up on one of Italy’s coast-guard vessels, the Ubaldo Diciotti, for almost a week as he demanded EU agreement on a policy for the redistribution of migrants. After a meeting in Brussels ended without progress, the Italian Catholic church helped to broker a deal. Most of the asylum-seekers entered Italy under its auspices; 20 each went to Ireland and, somewhat improbably, to Albania.
But this is only a temporary and partial climb-down. Mr Salvini and his political soulmate, Viktor Orban, the prime minister of Hungary, made clear during a meeting in Italy this week that they plan to build an EU-wide, anti-immigration front for the European elections next year (though they are at odds over the sharing of migrants). They plan to challenge the centrist alliance that France’s president, Emmanuel Macron, is trying to forge, and which they depict as pro-immigration. Mr Salvini said they were at a “historic turning point” in Europe. With traditional conservatives increasingly clashing with hardline populists, he may well be right. Den Rest des Beitrags lesen »
Political leaders who want to act humanely towards asylum-seekers and other migrants now face a moral dilemma. Either they pursue border control that is strict enough to undercut public support for far-right parties, or they risk allowing those parties to gain more power – and challenge the West’s most fundamental values.
PRINCETON – The most heart-rending media story of the past month featured children crying after being separated from their parents at the border between the United States and Mexico. US President Donald Trump, after initially defending the separations, yielded to public pressure and signed an executive order ending it. In Europe, too, immigrants made headlines as the ship Aquarius, carrying 629 rescued would-be immigrants, was turned away by Italy’s new populist government, as well as by Malta. That formed the background to a European Union meeting in Brussels, which hammered out a compromise on how to protect Europe’s borders and screen arriving migrants.
PRINCETON – Vor einigen Jahren drohte die europäische Schuldenkrise, das Schiff der Währungsunion zu versenken. Heute steht die Europäische Union vor noch größeren Problemen: Die Nord-Süd- und Ost-West-Spannungen in Europa haben sich vergrößert. Und nun ist nicht einmal mehr die Zukunft der Regierung der deutschen Kanzlerin Angela Merkel sicher. Ist es denkbar, dass die EU an diesen Spannungen zerbricht?
Logisch betrachtet gibt es keinen Grund, warum die EU jetzt am Rand des Untergangs stehen sollte. Immerhin wurde endlich eine nachhaltige Einigung über die griechischen Schulden erreicht, und das Flüchtlingsbüro der Vereinten Nationen hat in diesem Jahr nur 42.213 Flüchtlinge registriert – viel weniger als die Millionen, die 2015 an der Grenze der EU eintrafen.
Und trotzdem hat in diesem Jahr die Angst vor Migration einen Höchststand erreicht. Dies scheint nicht nur eine verzögerte Reaktion auf die große Einwanderungswelle vor drei Jahren zu sein, sondern auch die Unsicherheit nach der Finanzkrise von 2008 widerzuspiegeln. Die Europäer sorgen sich stärker um die Zukunft als noch vor zehn Jahren – nicht zuletzt deshalb, weil sie nicht davon überzeugt sind, dass ihre Politiker auf die aktuellen Probleme eine effektive Antwort haben. Den Rest des Beitrags lesen »
Date: 05-07-2018
Source: WELT
Viktor Orbán macht der Kanzlerin seine Aufwartung in einer Zeit, in der Angela Merkel so angeschlagen ist wie selten zuvor. Umso strahlender dürfte der Ungar in Berlin auftreten.
In der Asylpolitik ist die EU nun dort, wo Ungarns Premier sie haben will. Doch bei seinem Berlin-Besuch kann er sich auf diesem Erfolg nicht lange ausruhen – denn Angela Merkel hat etwas, was Orbán unbedingt braucht.
Es ist ein heikler Besuch in schwierigen Zeiten, wenigstens aus Sicht des Kanzleramts. Am Donnerstag kommt ausgerechnet Ungarns Ministerpräsident Viktor Orbán nach Berlin zu Gesprächen mit Bundeskanzlerin Angela Merkel (CDU) und Innenminister Horst Seehofer (CSU). Der Termin mit Europas ältestem Abschottungsbefürworter dürfte aus Sicht der Kanzlerin zur Unzeit kommen, haben sich die beiden Schwesterparteien doch eben erst auf einen Asylkompromiss geeinigt, der allerdings noch vom Koalitionspartner SPD abgesegnet werden muss.
Tatsächlich aber war das Treffen bereits direkt nach Orbáns Wiederwahl vereinbart worden, noch bevor der Streit die Union in Flammen setzte und das Ende von Merkels Kanzlerschaft nahe schien. Den Rest des Beitrags lesen »
ACH, EUROPA! Nur zwölf Jahre liegt der letzte EU-Vorsitz Österreichs zurück – und wie anders waren in dieser doch gar nicht so fernen Zeit die Vorzeichen, unter denen er stattfand.
Die ungetrübte Aufbruchsstimmung bei der Auftaktveranstaltung „Sound of Europe“, die am 250. Geburtstag Mozarts im Jänner 2006 in Salzburg über die Bühne ging, ist mir noch in guter Erinnerung. Unter dem Vorsitz von Bundeskanzler Schüssel berieten Europas Politiker damals mit Repräsentanten der Wissenschaft, Wirtschaft und Kunst im Zeichen eines noch ungebrochenen Erweiterungsoptimismus über Zukunftsfragen. Erst eineinhalb Jahre zuvor waren fast alle Nachbarstaaten des ehemaligen „Ostblocks“ zu EU-Mitgliedern geworden, die Erweiterung um Bulgarien und Rumänien stand unmittelbar bevor.
Wohl sprach man auch damals über eine „Europäische Krise“. Gemeint war damit aber lediglich das zähe Ringen um eine neue europäische Verfassung, deren Zustandekommen wegen der zunächst fehlenden Zustimmung der niederländischen und französischen Bevölkerung gefährdet schien. Sie trat dann drei Jahre später als Vertrag von Lissabon in Kraft. Solche Sorgen hätten wir heute gerne! Den Rest des Beitrags lesen »
BRUSSELS – The rate at which migrants are arriving has diminished considerably almost everywhere in Europe since the huge inflows seen in 2015. Yet migration continues to dominate political debate throughout the European Union. This suggests that populist, anti-immigrant sentiment is not actually being driven by claims that mainstream politicians cannot defend Europe’s frontiers.