One crisis after another dominated EU news much of 2015. And last week’s UN Security Council Syrian peace resolution, as hopeful as it may appear, won’t lead to an overnight resolution of even that predicament.
Europeans increasingly question whether the European Union, as it is today, can survive.
MEP Brian Hayes
Irish Member of the European Parliament (MEP) Brian Hayes wrote around 7 weeks ago in the Irish Times — on October 30, 2015 to be exact,
“The refugee crisis is now the biggest challenge facing the EU. The failure of Europe to find agreement and to act decisively on the issue has the potential to dismantle the EU from within. Migration is central to the British referendum on EU membership. It is the toxic issue that within five years could bring the European Union to its knees.”
From the EU’s summit last week, DW’s Barbara Wesel told DW News viewers,
“Some observers here say that the EU has never been in as bad a state as it is in right now … and it seems the problems are hardly bridgeable and that is also the reason why a group of countries, led by Germany, has started to look for their own solution.”
Bypass the Impasse
A subset of EU member countries held a mini-summit with Turkey about Syria’s refugees. It began on Thursday, December 17, 2015 prior to the full European Union Summit the same day.
Expanding on DW’s comments, Yahoo News said,
“The mini-summit … dubbed the “coalition of the willing” highlights the divisions in the 28-nation European Union over how to tackle the migrant and refugee crisis engulfing the continent.”
Merkel and EU’s Juncker
Channel News Asia said that top EU executives, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, plus leaders of a few other European nations met with Turkey’s prime minister, Ahmet Davutoglu.
An Austrian embassy spokesman identified Austria, Belgium, Finland, Greece, Luxembourg, the Netherlands and Sweden as the 7 other participants, Yahoo News reported.
Photo Credits: MEP B Hayes courtesy of Federation of European Cyclists, Merkel and Juncker courtesy of European Peoples Party; Licenses: CC BY 2.0
See a related In The News article dated August 24,2015.
