While EU technocrats have demonstrated an uncanny ability to scheme, threaten, kick the can and lie their way around the debt crisis, the migrant crisis will prove to be a much graver threat to the project. Strikingly, all it took was a few weeks of unrelenting migrants crossing into EU borders to put an end what is essentially the only achievement of the European Union - the Schengen system of borderless travel.
Without that, what is the EU really? A collection of nation-states forced by bureaucrats to pretend they are part of an artificial fantasy superstate called Europe? An amalgamation of debt serfs and technocratic overlords? See what I’m getting at?
– From the post: Does the Migrant Crisis Represent the End of the European Union?
By Michael Krieger: Conventional wisdom told us that refugee levels would plunge to a manageable level over the winter months before picking up again in the spring and summer. While they certainly have come down, they appear to be much higher than expected at a shocking eight times the level compared to the same period last year.
The Telegraph reports:
More than 100,000 refugees and migrants have arrived in Europe so far this year – more than eight times the rate seen during the same period in 2015.
Humanitarian organizations have already raised concern about the “huge” numbers and their implications as border controls continue to tighten on the long route to western Europe and the political will to welcome asylum seekers wanes.
Governments and aid agencies hoped that winter weather would slow the tide of flimsy smugglers’ boats being sent from Turkey to Greek islands but Greece alone has received more than 97,000 arrivals since the start of 2016, according to International Organisation for Migration (IOM) figures.
Following several days with no arrivals mainly due to rough seas, a total of 940 migrants were rescued on Monday off the coast of Sicily, most of whom had fled violence in Sub-Saharan Africa and Libya.
Libya. So who can we thank for that debacle? Oh yeah, the frontrunner for the Democratic nomination. Hillary “we came, we saw, he died” Clinton.
Caroline Anning, a spokesperson for the charity, said: “Based on previous trends, we had thought the numbers of people arriving would drop to a small amount in winter, as cold temperatures and dangerous seas make the journey even more difficult.
“The numbers have gone down, but thousands of people are still arriving every day.
“Their determination in the face of winter storms and increasingly strict European border controls demonstrates how desperate families are to flee the brutal conflicts in Syria, Afghanistan and Iraq, where most refugees are arriving from.”
Syria, Afghanistan and Iraq…I’ll leave it up to readers to determine what those three places have in common.
In Liberty,
Michael Krieger
In Liberty,
Michael Krieger
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