Angela Merkel and Jean-Claude Juncker looking (understandably) downbeat at the EU meeting on 24 June, Brussels. Photo European Commission.
Another month, another EU crisis meeting in Brussels. Over the weekend of 23/24 June it was the turn of migration to top the agenda.
For all the talk of “European solidarity” the EU’s summits are increasingly looking like meetings of Mafia families, each jostling for power and worried about their own skins – especially Germany’s Merkel.
The insults flew. Italian interior minister Matteo Salvini called France’s president Macron “arrogant”. Macron warned darkly about countries “that massively voice their national selfishness” and talked about nationalism spreading “like leprosy”. Hungary, Slovakia, Poland and the Czech Republic weren’t even invited – and would have boycotted anyway.
As things fall apart, none of them will acknowledge that the rise of openly neofascist parties all over Europe is a direct consequence of their own migration policies. Reaction is driving reaction.