Hungary Refuses to Pay Fines for Breaking EU Asylum Rules
- By ThatRobGuy
- News & Current Events (Articles Required)
- 18 Replies
It sounds like it's Hungary's own fault for getting involved and accepting EU funds in the first place.
When countries accept a measure of austerity from other countries (or a collective of other countries), you become beholden to some of their expectations and demands, and sometimes that involves other nations' governments demanding things your own people aren't going to like.
That why national leaders need to think very carefully about what their priorities are, and what level of control they're willing to give before signing onto some of these international organizations.
Greece had a similar situation of citizen backlash after they received money from EU nations (3 times) in the form of austerity measures, and in exchange, those EU nations demanded that they change some of their working-hours expectations, public benefits, and pension policies.
If keeping a 32 hour work week and paying for people to retire at age 52 was something that was a priority for them, they should've brainstormed a way to make it work domestically without accepting money from other countries.
In Hungary's case, I can understand their frustrations with the asylum rules...the EU was basically saying "you have to onboard this culture clash because we said so, regardless of negative impacts"
...but this should be a lesson. There's no such thing as "free money". When you receive money that wasn't the result of your own efforts, there's almost always going to be strings attached.
Or perhaps a better analogy, joining the EU (or any other similar organization for which you aren't the "big dog on the block"), is sort of like deciding to buy a house in an HOA where you're not the HOA president, someone's going to be telling you what to do with your money and property and you're going to have to suck it up and take it if you were naive enough to sign on the dotted line because you only saw benefit and discounted the fact that there could be a downside.
In this instance, Hungary joined the "HOA", and the cranky 63 year old busy-body HOA president who likes to come by and tell you that your mailbox is the wrong color (Brussels) is fining them.
When countries accept a measure of austerity from other countries (or a collective of other countries), you become beholden to some of their expectations and demands, and sometimes that involves other nations' governments demanding things your own people aren't going to like.
That why national leaders need to think very carefully about what their priorities are, and what level of control they're willing to give before signing onto some of these international organizations.
Greece had a similar situation of citizen backlash after they received money from EU nations (3 times) in the form of austerity measures, and in exchange, those EU nations demanded that they change some of their working-hours expectations, public benefits, and pension policies.
If keeping a 32 hour work week and paying for people to retire at age 52 was something that was a priority for them, they should've brainstormed a way to make it work domestically without accepting money from other countries.
In Hungary's case, I can understand their frustrations with the asylum rules...the EU was basically saying "you have to onboard this culture clash because we said so, regardless of negative impacts"
...but this should be a lesson. There's no such thing as "free money". When you receive money that wasn't the result of your own efforts, there's almost always going to be strings attached.
Or perhaps a better analogy, joining the EU (or any other similar organization for which you aren't the "big dog on the block"), is sort of like deciding to buy a house in an HOA where you're not the HOA president, someone's going to be telling you what to do with your money and property and you're going to have to suck it up and take it if you were naive enough to sign on the dotted line because you only saw benefit and discounted the fact that there could be a downside.
In this instance, Hungary joined the "HOA", and the cranky 63 year old busy-body HOA president who likes to come by and tell you that your mailbox is the wrong color (Brussels) is fining them.
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