What is Europe’s lesson from the refugee crisis?

The refugee crisis in Europe, the decisions and proposals published daily in the European press and the ongoing political struggle in Greece, provides us with an insight of what has gone wrong with the European Union.

First, the Greeks who were cheering when Mr Panos Kammenos, defence secretary and leader of Independent Greeks,(ANEL), junior partner of the Greek coalition government threatened to open the country’s borders and flush the EU with ‘jihadists’ are discovering that the EU may shut down the borders with Greece and leave the ountry isolated. One should be out of his mind to believe that only us Greeks could open and shut the borders on demand without any impact while the other side would just sit and wait passively.

Then, the other individual EU member –states are following their own and separate policies instead of making decisions upon a common international affairs policy (and imposing similar sanctions to the ones envisaged for Greece to any state that would not comply) also appearing out of their minds; like the Greeks. The main difference is that these countries are placed hundrends of miles away from the refugees entry points. We should not forget that Germany publicly announced a ‘welcome’ policy while Hungary which is its neighbour adopted a ‘not welcome’ policy. This is neither a ‘common European policy’ nor a ‘European Union issue’ even if one subtracts from the equation the ‘special case’ of Greece. Surely this is going to have serious impact on those states too; it’s not just yet another “greek issue”.

Let’s be clear about what is happening right now: EU bears the consequences of not advancing towards a political unification in good time, whereas it wishes to impose political solutions onto the member states, and at the same time, it retreated as an economic union from a position of cooperation and a relative autonomy of member states (which was its original plan). Right now the EU is in a position where neither its original objectives have been achieved to the extend originally intended by its founders, nor the subsequent pursuits based on its evolution. It is a double failure, neither the Treaty of Rome, nor the Treaty of Maastricht have been fully successful given their original aims. We have almost failed common market area where half of the continent rigs the market with the products of the other half in exchange of subsidies and protection, plus a failed super-state full of endless restrictions, rules and ‘directives’.

Thus the EU has slowly transformed into a cumbersome bureaucracy that exercises super-state control over markets torpedoing economic growth not only reducing the relaxation of regulations but placing in doubt most civil liberties. If the EU cannot guarantee the free movement of goods, services, people, capital and ideas throughout its territory for all member-states and its citizens, but reneges in the first difficulty placing restrictions, its basic ideological compass is one step away from the dustbin.

The sooner European Countries realize that events like the refugee crisis have global repercusions and inevitably lead to regional conflicts (and let’s be open about this: there’s a ‘scent of gunpowder’ and this is not entirely a figure of speech), the faster they will implement policies that will lead out of trouble not only the EU but its greater neighbouring region to the south.

If the European North has not learned from the past turbulence at the Balkans, it is likely that we will see a repeat of the same political scene, which led Europe into a position we hoped we would never see again.