Europe is undergoing an existential crisis. Whatever the eurozone hasn’t already managed to break is well on the way to being destroyed by the refugee crisis.
The Schengen agreement of open borders has more or less vanished, at least for now. The Dublin regulation, aimed at supporting asylum seekers, is hardly being upheld. The burden-sharing schemes that were agreed last year to distribute refugees more evenly over Europe are failing to come to fruition.
Donald Tusk, president of the European Council, warned earlier this year that the EU has two months to get the refugee crisis under control, or the whole EU project will be in question.
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Meanwhile, U.K. Prime Minister David Cameron is trying to renegotiate Britain’s EU membership. He now appears to have come a step closer to a deal that would restrict state support for EU migrants working in the UK. The idea is to invoke an “emergency brake“ to justify a change in policy, based on the claim that the U.K. welfare system can’t cope with demand.
Now, most countries are not against welfare restrictions. Some central European states do see it as discriminating against their citizens, but it is not unfeasible that Cameron will be able to get a deal. In fact, a timely focus group study revealed that Poles and Bulgarians themselves are not against welfare restrictions in the U.K.
But the main point is this: no one really cares.
