In December 2016, Hungary’s far-right prime minister Viktor Orbán stated that his country’s “stance on immigration [was] becoming more widely acceptable,” and that “the concept of establishing refugee camps outside the territory of the European Union is gradually gaining a majority within the EU.” Recent events suggest that he was right.

European governments continue to close their borders and dump refugees on each other’s territory, as France recently did in Italy. But above all these states clearly agree on the need to prevent refugees from arriving in Europe in the first place.

This is how we should understand the recent declarations by France’s president Emmanuel Macron and Italy’s prime minister Giuseppe Conte backing the establishment of asylum-processing centers in the mostly African countries from which migrants and refugees arrive. Or, indeed, European Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker’s recent announcement of a plan to deploy 10,000 extra armed guards to protect Europe’s external borders.