As the refugee crisis threatens to unravel the European integration project, senior level EU officials are pulling out all stops to ensure that the situation doesn’t get out of hand to the point of forcing the cancellation of the Schengen agreement.
This is a tough task, especially since everyone expects increased refugee flows in the coming months, something which European Commissioner for Migration, Home Affairs and Citizenship Dimitris Avramopoulos confirmed the other day in an interview with Sueddeutsche Zeitung.
In a classic case of too little, too late, Avramopoulos said he has traveled throughout Europe, offering EU member states both financial and technical support to help them deal with the flow of refugees. However, most of the attention is naturally on the hotspots in Greece and Italy. And quite indicative of the critical nature of the situation, Avramopoulos said “we have no more than four weeks in order to achieve results at the borders.”
Yet, Europe’s passport-free zone is already on the verge of being abandoned. Sweden and Denmark began demanding ID to travel between their nations for the first time in 50 years while several countries, including Austria and the Netherlands, have introduced border controls.
EU officials know that the abandonment of the Schengen agreement puts at risk the entire European integration project, including the single currency.
For Europe then the stakes could not be any higher, but neither can individual EU member states ignore their own security, stability, and economic well-being.
So could it be that the unraveling of the EU is already happening and we just don’t know it yet?
See all the latest news from Greece and the world at Greekreporter.com. Contact our newsroom to report an update or send your story, photos and videos. Follow GR on Google News and subscribe here to our daily email!
