Monday, September 14, 2015

Why the E.U. is Compromised in Handling the Refugee Crisis

At least four E.U. states, including Hungary, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, and Poland, rejected a federal plan on September 11, 2015 that would have imposed refugee quotas on the states. The failure to come up with a fair allocation of migrants by state threatened to undo the borderless travel within the E.U. The tremendous influx of mostly Syrian refugees exacerbated differences between the states; given their power even at the federal level of the E.U., the infighting was a risk to the viability of the E.U. itself. I contend that structural flaws in the E.U. itself unnecessarily compromised the Union from quashing the risk to itself by solving the refugee problem. The state governments were clearly not in unison in dealing with the problem themselves.


The complete essay is at Essays on Two Federal Empires.


Refugees held up in Hungary because the state's government was overwhelmed. Why didn't the E.U. step in to help? (Mauricio Limo/NYT).