Professor Enrico Letta talks crises facing EU
The European Union is witnessing a crisis never seen before and discussing about it before an international audience is not easy, Professor Enrico Letta, Dean of the Paris School International Affairs, said during a lecture at Kuwait Economic Society on Wednesday. Letta said the EU is embroiled in an unprecedented and saddening reality. “We never had the same dimensions of the crisis which we are facing right now. What we are experiencing are very unique experiences which never happened before in the history of the European Union,” he said. According to Letta, for the first time, EU is battling four different crises, each of which has its own surreal characteristics and is unprecedented in form. He named them as: 1) economic and financial crisis, 2) immigration crisis, 3) terrorism and 4) ‘Brexit’, or the recent decision by Britain to leave the European Union. He said these four major crises are not easy to deal with, but the EU shall overcome them.
“Brexit is unprecedented because earlier we used to have trouble deciding whom to accept in this regional grouping, about expansion or enlargement of the bloc. But for the first time in the history of the EU, the UK has voted to exit, which will not be easy. The role of Britain in the defense and security of the EU is really crucial. We need to stay united, so maybe we will need to separate the issue of defense and security from Brexit,” Letta said. He added that in order to deal with the unprecedented problem of terrorism, the EU should unite and reinforce its defense and security in order to readily react when terrorism strikes.