EU leaders face deep division over migration at summit
BRUSSELS: EU leaders face deep divisions on migration and the eurozone at a crucial summit in Brussels yesterday that could decide the fate of embattled German Chancellor Angela Merkel and even the bloc itself.
The meeting comes amid warnings that authoritarian and ‘anti-European’ movements will profit from any failure by the 28 leaders to deal with the wave of problems, especially a flare-up of tensions over migrants.
The rise of Italy’s new populist government and bitter rows over who should take in migrants arriving on numerous rescue boats have revived divisions, despite the fact that arrivals have dipped sharply since the 2015 migration crisis.
Eurozone reforms, pushed by French President Emmanuel Macron to revamp the economy and counter the rise of populists in the wake of Britain’s vote to leave the EU, are meanwhile stalled in the face of opposition.
Brexit itself, which has dominated recent summits, will be relegated to the sidelines of the meeting with Prime Minister Theresa May set to give her colleagues only a brief update on the deadlocked negotiations.
EU president Donald Tusk warned on the eve of the summit that time is running out for leaders to reassure their citizens that they can control migration before authoritarian politicians win the ‘high-stakes’ debate.
“More and more people are starting to believe that only strong-handed authority, antiEuropean and anti-liberal in spirit, with a tendency towards overt authoritarianism, is capable of stopping the wave of illegal migration,” Tusk, the summit host, said in a letter to leaders.
“The stakes are very high and time is short,” he warned.
European Parliament President Antonio Tajani warned separately in Britain’s The Guardian newspaper that failure to act on migration ‘could deal a fatal blow to the European project’.
One senior EU official dubbed it the ‘mother of all summits’ because of the huge number of key issues that leaders are under pressure to resolve at the two- day meeting yesterday and today. — AFP
More and more people are starting to believe that only strong-handed authority, anti-European and anti-liberal in spirit, with a tendency towards overt authoritarianism, is capable of stopping the wave of illegal migration. Donald Tusk, EU President