The European Union's efforts to create a unified border guard are being thwarted by member countries' unwillingness to surrender their sovereignty to an EU-wide institution, according to Polish political analyst Adriel Kasonta, writing for the National Interest.
Both Poland and Hungary oppose Frontex, the Warsaw-based EU agency tasked with policing the member countries' borders. They also oppose its proposed successor, the European Border and Coast Guard Agency. According to Kasonta, Western Europe is to blame for both failing to tackle the influx of migrants with its "European" policy, and attempts to create supranational agencies to reduce migrant flows.
"[The] agency will be able to act without the concerned country’s approval, and although member states would be consulted, they would not have the power to veto a deployment unilaterally," Kasonta wrote.
Kasonta also noted that the lack of measures, together with the EU's "European" policy of accepting refugees, has caused Eastern European countries to deal with the influx on their own terms.
"In theory, indeed, extreme times demand extreme measures, but in practice it looks like again, in the course of our Western friends' 'open-arms' foreign policy, the [Central and Eastern European] countries are obliged to meet the challenge," Kasonta wrote, comparing Eastern European countries' efforts to stem refugee flows to the efforts of the UK's Royal Air Force to stop Nazi Germany's 1940 offensive against the country.
Kasonta concluded by comparing the EU's efforts to cope with the refugee influx to Nazi totalitarianism, as it was described by George Orwell, summarizing them as choosing "'happiness' over 'freedom'".
