Migration Crisis Gives Rise to Xenophobia in Central, Eastern EU Gov'ts

Europe’s indecisiveness in the face of surging migrant flows has become an excuse for some EU governments to openly use "xenophobic rhetoric" to denounce refugees, a Washington-based watchdog said Tuesday.

MOSCOW (Sputnik) — The 2016 Nations in Transit report by Freedom House, a US organization measuring the level of democracy abroad, pointed to the remarks by politicians in Central and Eastern Europe on the ongoing Muslim influx to Europe.

"Claiming that Europe faces a Muslim invasion has become standard fare for a range of politicians and political parties in Europe," Freedom House project director Nate Schenkkan wrote.

He said the remarks were first made by Hungarian Prime Minister Victor Orban in 2015 after his nation was swept by an unprecedented migrant crisis and echoed by other Central European leaders as thousands of refugees from the Middle East were passing through their countries on the way to Northern Europe.

"The EU’s fumbling response to the migration crisis has left the door wide open to populists who openly reject fundamental principles of liberal democracy," Schenkkan claimed, adding this endangered the entire European project.

In the south, Balkan nations have backslid on democratic reforms they were perusing in the early 2000s, the report stated. It warned EU countries against isolating the Balkans from the rest of Europe and shutting the borders to stave off the wave of immigrants.

Europe has been beset by a massive refugee crisis, with hundreds of thousands of undocumented migrants fleeing their home countries in the Middle East and North Africa to escape violence and poverty.