The migrant crisis could shatter the EU

Jan 25, 2016 by

By Cerberus, TCW:

[…]  Hard-wired into the DNA of Europe’s leaders is the idea that the answer to every challenge is more Europe, not less. But this time they might just seek solace in less. Ever since Angela Merkel’s catastrophic decision to throw open Germany’s borders – and by extension the whole of the EU’s including Britain’s – to countless millions of people, mostly Muslims, from countries wracked by war and poverty, the EU’s impotence in the face of external threats has been fully exposed.

A genuine superstate – a country such as the USA or China – would have responded to mass invasion by people with no understanding of or sympathy with its civilisation or values by firm action. Navies and troops would have been deployed to break up the people-smuggling gangs, return the boats to whence they came and divert would-be migrants and refugees to camps in the region. Not so the EU, a Potemkin superstate, one without a military and without any form of clear and decisive leadership.

The EU is an empire of sorts, but one that lacks the kind of central authority to deal with the tumult of events. It lacks the economic and fiscal authority required to handle financial shocks and it lacks the political authority to deal with geopolitical upheavals such as the turmoil in the Middle East and North Africa.

A decision to suspend Schengen for two years – which is tantamount to scrapping it – would, as Valls suggested, be a grievous blow to the EU’s pretensions to evolve into a superstate to rival the US, China, and, in its shrunken but still menacing form, Russia. It would be like Texas setting up passport controls on its border with Oklahoma. It would be a public confession that the dream of “ever closer union” is just that – a dream.

If the EU resembles anything, it is not the USA, with its common language, identity, culture, currency, political and legal system, and military. It is not even like the centralised authority of the Roman Empire. Instead, it is like the enfeebled collection of disputatious kingdoms that made up Europe’s Holy Roman Empire until it was put out of its misery by Napoleon.

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Read also:  How Labour turned London into a foreign city by Harriet Sargeant, Mailonline

These are dangerous days for Western civilisation by Norman Tebbit, Telegraph

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