Does Trump Read Gurfinkiel ?

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In an interview with the British paper The Times and the German paper Bild published on January 16, president elect Donald Trump said that German Chancellor Angela Merkel made « a very catastrophic mistake » by admitting one million migrants from the Middle East into Germany in 2015 and urging the other EU countries to follow her stand. Moreover, Trump explicitly linked this « mistake » with the Brexit referendum in 2016.

It is usually assumed that Brexit supporters were more concerned by EU immigration to the UK than by Middle Eastern migrants. French political analyst Michel Gurfinkiel argued however in PJMedia on June 29, 2016, shortly after the Brexit referendum, that the German and EU embrace of Middle Eastern migrants may have contributed to the British voters’ final anti-EU switch.

Gurfinkiel’s PJMedia article was widely circulated at the time, especially among Trump supporters.

January 19th, 2016.

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Here is Gurfinkiel’s 2016 article in full :

The Road To Brexit : How Merkel Thwarted Cameron’s Smart Gamble on Europe

The German Chancelor’s reckless policies on migrants and Turkey turned Brexit into a reasonable proposition.

BY MICHEL GURFINKIEL.

https://pjmedia.com/blog/the-road-to-brexit-how-merkel-thwarted-camerons-smart-gamble/?singlepage=true

There were many signposts on the road to Brexit. As early as in 2001, the Swiss rejected access to the EU by an overwhelming 72.5 %.  Four years later, in 2005, both the French and the Dutch rejected an European constitutional treaty project in separate referendums ; polls indicated that similar referendums would have turned the same way in other places. Over the recent years, anti-EU defiance increased. Radical anti-EU parties or more moderate Eurosceptic parties got higher and higner returns in most countries, either in national or European ballots. In some countries – Hungary, Poland, Greece – they just won the election and took over the cabinet. In some others – Austria – they almost did it.

Brexit is thus not so much a revolution in European affairs as the culmination of a long and steady process.

United Europe had been popular among Europeans, and every European nation was willing to join it, as long as it delivered prosperity, democracy, stability, global security. This was true of the six founding nations in the 1950’s and 1960’s, of Britain, Ireland, Scandinavia and the former Mediterranean dictatorships in the 1970’s, of the former Communist countries of Eastern Europe in the 1900’s.

Things changed by the mid-1990’s, however, when what had been known hitherto as the European Community was changed into the much tighter European Union. It soon became apparent, whatever the political class would say, that the more federalist the Union was becoming, the less it could actually deliver. Instead of the ever increasing prosperity they had taken for granted for half a century, many Europeans had to face zero growth, bankruptcy and long term austerity programs. Instead of more democracy – free expression, the rule of elected and responsible governments -, they were getting more « political correctness » and more bureaucracy. Instead of more global security, a new pervading sense of powerlessness in front of Russian imperialism and jihadist terror. Instead of more stability, more social disruption, especially in such essential areas as family and national identity.

The EU leadership was aware that things had gone sour and that disaffection was accumulating ; but it was not mentally equiped, for the best part of it, to draw the proper consequences and find solutions. David Cameron, the conservative Eurosceptic PM of Britain, was a exception in this regard : he had a plan, and a rather brilliant one at that. He was convinced he could have it both ways : organize a British referendum on Europe – thus allowing the anti-EU tide to rise very high -, and win it, even by a thin edge. He would then have appeared as the « savior of Europe », and be in a position to ask for a global reshaping and loosening of the European treaties.

Maybe such a calculation was sound enough in 2013, when Cameron promised to hold a referendum on the British EU membership. There was however a dramatic acceleration in the European and British anti-EU public opinion over the three past years. So much so that while Cameron may have been banking on 52%/48 % returns against Brexit, he got just the opposite.

Several developments contributed to the pro-Brexit shift. The EU political leadership’s failure to address the global Middle Eastern and North African issues  – from the rise of Isis to the return of Russia, and from the involvement of European Muslims in jihadist massacres in Europe to the migrants crisis – , and German Chancelor Angela Merkel’s role in that failure, were probably decisive.

Above all, there was Merkel’s sudden and unilateral embrace, one year ago, of the Middle Eastern and North African migrants and refugees cause, and her call for the immediate admission of hundreds of thousands people, or even millions, in the EU, on a proportional per country basis. Indeed, she brought some 800 000 migrants almost overnight into her own 80 million country – a move that brought about a wide range of untractable difficulties, including in sexual ethics and women’s rights issues. Most other European countries acquiesed to Merkel’s call, but in fact downsized their own admission quotas to much smaller numbers. Some countries – Hungary, Slovenia, Poland - flatly rejected the German Chancelor’s guidelines.

Then, there was Merkel’s no less sudden and unilateral rapprochement with Turkey, once it was clear that more migrants were planning to settle in the EU. She traded a promise by Ankara to tighten its borders with European countries against a promise to resume decades-old talks for Turkey’s access to the Union, and, in the meanwhile, to let all Turkish citizens into the EU as visitors, even without a visa. There are exactly as many Turks, today, as Germans : 80 millions.

The British, who, in spite of an outwardly tolerant view  of multiculturalism,  have more restrictive immigration laws than most other EU nations, and who never endorsed the Schengen accords about free movement in the EU, were deeply puzzled. And many of those who had wavered until then between Euroscepticism and Eurofederalism concluded that Eurofederalism was leading to reckless, ill-conceived and unstoppable decisions in such essential fields as mass immigration and others.

The mess had to be checked. Or at least Britain should be kept out of it. Brexit might have looked in the past a bit quixotic ; and the European option might have been seen as safer. Thanks to Merkel, the proposition was now reversed.

© Michel Gurfinkiel & PJMedia, 2016

Michel Gurfinkiel is the Founder and President of the Jean-Jacques Rousseau Institute, a conservative think-thank in France, and a Shillman/Ginsburg Fellow at Middle East Forum.