During the early months of 2016, the Hungarian Europe Society started to implement
its project called “The Refugee Crisis and the Reactions of the Visegrad Countries”.
The project included comprehensive and comparative research in the four countries
as well as a one-day workshop in Budapest. Experts of the Hungarian Europe Society
and further researchers from the Czech Republic, Poland, Slovakia and Hungary examined
the various – political, legal, social and cultural – aspects of the unprecedented
phenomenon of the previous year, that is the mass inflow of mostly Muslim asylum seekers
from the Middle East into Europe and the way the V4 countries – all members of the
European Union - responded to it. By September 2016, individual case studies have
been completed focusing on different dimensions of the subject matter – they can be
found as attachments to this report.
The following text gives a concise summary of the most important findings of the project
with a strong emphasis on Hungary as the main point of entry for refugees towards
the Western part of Europe. We begin with the historic-cultural impact on the handling
of the crisis in the Central European region, followed by the analysis of an expert
survey managed by the Hungarian Europe Society, then, the analysis of the new characteristics
of the Visegrad cooperation regarding the migration problem follows. The next chapter
is about the “frontcountry” Hungary: this case has been investigated thoroughly also
because of the central role the country played during the peak of the crisis and also
since its government’s rhetoric and measures represent the most radical anti-thesis
to the crisis management of the European institutions and the German government. At
the end of our report, summaries of the Slovak and Czech situation can be read – since
Poland remained practically untouched from the crisis, there is no special case study
about the Polish development.
