A Dog’s Breakfast of National Policies for the EU Integration in Migration and Asylum: Differences in Dissent Strategies between Hungary and Bulgaria and the Factors Behind Them

This paper introduces a comparative assessment of the Hungarian and Bulgarian governments' reactions to the migration crisis of 2015-2016 and of the migration policy choices of these two countries, in close connection with the institutional deadlock around the EU-level migration policy reform, attempted at the end of 2015-beginning of 2016 and rejected by the Member States in the EU Council. It offers an analysis of how the migration crisis affected Hungary and Bulgaria, how the governments responded to it, and what were the deciding factors for their choice of responses. I show how the domestic politics on the migration issue in these countries are intertwined with the European politics and the 2015 reform proposal of the CEAS, which was supposed to change some major principles of the migration policy of the EU and introduce the relocation mechanism from the more affected member states to the less affected. This paper engages with the way the governments of Bulgaria and Hungary dealt with the proposed reform: these countries had similar conditions with regards to the migration crisis in terms of affectedness by it and in terms of population identities, but arrived at different outcomes regarding their vote in the EU Council on the CEAS reform. Bulgaria supported the reform, while Hungary vehemently opposed it and any similar redistributive measures across the EU. However, in fact, unofficially Bulgaria also chose to dissent from the rules that EU migration and asylum policy dictated to it, but chose to do this without attracting as much attention as Hungary did by openly going against further EU integration in migration and introduction of relocation quotas. Similarities of the conditions did result in similar attitudes towards migration both among the population and in government, but the differences in the political and economic set up and the strength of the governing parties led the two countries to different paths in voting for the CEAS reform in the EU Council. The paper explores the reasons for this difference and investigates what mechanisms were responsible for the respective decisions of the countries’ governments, demonstrating along the way the role and importance of party politics, electoral struggle, and the role of personal leadership in domestic politics for the result of EU-level reforms and integration. It draws special attention to the importance of the embeddedness of the political parties in power domestically into the EU political architecture and the ties particular parties in government (e.g. Fidesz) have with other EU Member States’ parties and blocks in the European Parliament. The strength of the ruling government and the dominant party is also crucial for the way a Member State approaches decisions on further integration with the EU, as the case of Bulgaria demonstrates. These insights should be taken into account when further theorizing about the progress or European integration in new areas or the lack thereof.