Europe: Freedom Requires Authority-Migration, Integration and Democratic Defence-A Perspective from Timor-Leste

By: Dionísio Babo Soares*

Every political order rests upon a balance between legitimacy and power. Legitimacy without power becomes mere exhortation; power without legitimacy becomes coercion. Enduring societies maintain both in a productive tension. In debating immigration and integration, contemporary Europe is essentially debating this balance, even if it rarely frames the question in these terms.

A democracy needs laws that are enforced. The fact that such a proposition now requires justification is revealing in itself. It suggests that part of the European debate has come to regard state authority as a relic of less enlightened times, rather than as the condition that makes rights enforceable.

Defending legitimate authority does not mean yielding to authoritarianism. It means recognising that a right the state cannot protect is precarious, dependent on the strength of those who claim it or the indulgence of those who challenge it. Historically, those who suffer first from such insecurity are not the powerful, who possess their own means of protection, but those who have nothing to rely upon except the law.

The opposite error deserves equally rigorous scrutiny. Severity is not evidence of competence. A measure does not become sensible simply because it is harsh, nor does an immigration policy become effective by multiplying obstacles for those who work, obey the law and seek to integrate. Administrative cruelty rarely solves the problem it claims to address; it merely adds another injustice and gives opponents of public order another argument.

The strength of a state should be measured by the results it achieves, not by the amount of suffering it is prepared to inflict for domestic political consumption.

The European challenge therefore lies between two equally unproductive extremes: immigration without rules and regulation that confuses rules with hostility.

Receiving people and integrating them are two fundamentally different undertakings. The first is an administrative act; the second is a long-term political process. No society in history has successfully integrated new populations merely by formally recognising their rights. Integration has always required democratic institutions, shared expectations and an authority capable of resolving the conflicts that arise from them.

Europe must therefore provide the material conditions for integration — employment, language acquisition, education and housing — while combating the exploitation and discrimination that undermine it. At the same time, it must affirm, without hesitation, that participation in a democratic society entails acceptance of a legal order that cannot be subordinated to the preferences of individual groups.

No one should be compelled to abandon their identity. Equally, no one may invoke that identity to deprive others of the protection of the law.

Equality between women and men is not a negotiable cultural convention. Freedom of conscience is not a privilege that a community may grant to or withdraw from its members. The right to leave a religion does not depend upon the permission of those who claim to speak on its behalf. When individuals must choose between exercising their rights and living safely in their own communities, no genuine integration exists. Instead, institutional inertia tolerates a form of parallel sovereignty.

This is precisely where the state has a duty to intervene—responding to someone experiencing coercion by saying that the situation is culturally complex amounts to an abdication of responsibility. Complexity demands greater competence in intervention; it does not excuse inaction.

It would be equally mistaken, however, to reduce every integration problem to a cultural question. Housing, employment, education and the quality of public services matter just as much as beliefs and convictions. People cannot reasonably be expected to trust institutions they experience as ineffective every day. Integration entails responsibilities, but people must find the promise of belonging credible to accept them.

History teaches us that organisations often appropriate legitimate causes, even when their methods and objectives contradict the very principles those causes represent. Solidarity with victims of war does not legitimise recruitment into violence. Defending one population does not justify intimidating another. Moral outrage does not confer exemption from democratic rules — nor should it do so when the cause is one with which we sympathise.

Where evidence suggests that extremist movements have infiltrated legitimate civic mobilisation, including networks directed or financed from abroad, that evidence must be investigated. If we confirm such manipulation, we must confront it. A problem does not disappear simply because acknowledging it is politically inconvenient.

However, rigorous scrutiny requires proof. A foreign connection alone does not establish a hostile operation. An international association is not automatically an extremist organisation. A demonstration does not become suspicious merely because it criticises a government’s policies. Investigations must focus on conduct, relevant financial flows, operational links and concrete actions — not on people’s origins, religion or the political inconvenience of their opinions.

Those who exploit humanitarian causes to promote violence are pursuing their own agenda. They turn the people they claim to represent into instruments; they invoke their suffering while pushing their interests aside. This is not solidarity but appropriation. Civic movements themselves have a strategic interest in preventing such capture: distancing themselves from those who seek to manipulate them does not weaken their cause; it preserves their credibility.

Defending democratic institutions today requires a less conventional understanding of confrontation. Since the Peace of Westphalia, the international order has maintained a relatively clear distinction between states of war and peace. That distinction has gradually eroded. States can now pursue strategic objectives without formally declaring war or launching a military invasion. Cyberattacks, sabotage, information manipulation, covert interference and economic coercion have become instruments of confrontation that the European Union describes as hybrid threats, deliberately operating below the threshold of open conflict.

The objectives of such operations often extend well beyond securing a diplomatic concession. They seek to destroy public confidence in institutions, deepen internal divisions, and undermine a society’s ability to determine its political future freely. No need to occupy a parliament physically to influence the circumstances under which it is elected or the decisions it can make.

There are, therefore, forms of warfare that do not require conventional war. Ignoring them simply because they do not resemble traditional armed conflict would be strategically imprudent.

It would be equally imprudent, however, to describe everything as warfare. Social discontent is not necessarily a foreign operation; a demonstration is not an attack on sovereignty; and criticism of NATO, the European Union or a government does not establish allegiance to any foreign power. Freedom of dissent includes the right to defend positions that the majority considers profoundly mistaken. Without evidence, national security language becomes a convenient instrument against political opposition—and a state that uses it this way ultimately undermines the legitimacy it claims to defend.

European institutions recognise the risk that hostile actors will instrumentalise migration flows. Here, too, careful analysis requires distinguishing between those who orchestrate an operation and those used as its instruments. Actors who exploit vulnerable people as a means of exerting political pressure must not be confused with the people being exploited, who are frequently the operation’s first victims. A competent democracy must do two things simultaneously: protect individuals and neutralise hostile operations. If it sees these objectives as incompatible, the problem is not an excess of principles but a lack of institutional capacity.

Much of the European debate appears structured to avoid precisely this responsibility. On one side lies the temptation to dismiss every concern about integration or security as prejudice. On the other side lies the temptation to present immigration as the universal explanation for difficulties with much broader causes.

Rhetoric directed against foreigners cannot resolve housing shortages. Communities cannot resolve coercion through abstract celebrations of diversity.

The law must be enforced firmly, proportionately and under effective oversight. This requires police forces capable of acting while remaining accountable for abuses; independent courts; and intelligence services that investigate concrete threats without treating entire communities as objects of suspicion. None of these requirements is contradictory. Together, they constitute the normal functioning of the rule of law.

Moreover, the standards applied must remain independent of our political sympathies. Religiously motivated violence cannot be excused by the existence of the far right, nor can far-right violence be minimised because other threats exist. Standards that bend according to political preferences are not genuine.

Viewed from Timor-Leste, the central question concerns the relationship between sovereignty and responsibility. The authority of a state is not exhausted by its formal recognition. It is expressed through its ability to protect people, enforce rules and preserve the political community’s freedom to make its own decisions. A young state learns early that proclaimed sovereignty and exercised sovereignty are two different things.

Europe must defend this capacity without apologising for its existence as a democratic space. It does not need cultural uniformity. It must ensure that no one can impose authority on others that conflicts with their fundamental rights.

Europe should provide refuge to those who need protection, integrate those who build their lives within its societies, correct the injustices its institutions produce, and confront those who exploit democratic freedoms to organise violence or impose fear. It must do so without administrative cruelty, without collective persecution, and without tolerating coercion.

The choice is not between an authoritarian Europe and a Europe incapable of acting. That is a false choice, useful only to those who thrive at the extremes. The serious alternative is a democracy capable of governing: one that understands its limits, exercises its legitimate powers and does not abandon its citizens to private centres of power, extremist movements or external interests.

History offers few examples of power vacuums that last. When legitimate authority withdraws, power does not disappear; it changes hands. Those who assume power without a democratic mandate rarely begin by asking about the rights of the people they govern.

Author’s disclaimer: The views expressed in this article are strictly personal and do not represent or bind any institutions with which the author is currently or has previously been associated. This article is intended as a contribution to public and academic debate.