Why the Shadow of the 2015 Migration Crisis Still Hangs Over Europe French President Macron’s speech and success of anti-immigration party in German elections show security is priority for EUBy Simon Nixon
https://www.wsj.com/articles/why-the-shadow-of-the-2015-migration-crisis-still-hangs-over-europe-1506877262
In the eyes of some, Emmanuel Macron flunked it.
When the French president last week delivered a marathon speech outlining his vision of the European Union, many economists hoped this would include a radical plan for deeper eurozone fiscal integration.
Indeed, the expectation was that this would form the core of his speech. Yet Mr. Macron didn’t say anything about pooling eurozone debts and had little to say on the creation of a common eurozone budget. Instead, the most eye-catching parts of his speech concerned security and defense, where he proposed a far-reaching agenda to secure the EU’s external borders, stabilize its neighborhood and establish a European Defence Force to be funded by a new tax on financial transactions.
But Mr. Macon’s choice of priorities shouldn’t have come as a surprise. It isn’t just that the chances of the EU reaching an agreement on fiscal integration look remote given opposition from several Northern European countries, not just Germany.
The reality is that there is no urgent need for the eurozone to pursue fiscal integration, particularly now that it is in a cyclical recovery. Sure, the eurozone remains vulnerable to shocks. But there is little the eurozone could do that would improve its ability to cope with a crisis in the Italian bond markets—widely perceived to be the biggest threat to eurozone stability—nor the risk that the crisis in Spain over Sunday’s attempted referendum on Catalonian independence spirals into a wider threat to financial stability. For now, the key to strengthening the eurozone lies in policies that will raise potential growth through better functioning markets, which is where Mr. Macron focused his economic agenda.
Europe’s security challenges, on the other hand, really do pose a clear and present risk to the EU’s survival.
Senior officials say that the closest the EU came to collapse was at the height of the migration crisis in 2015. The arrival of more than one million asylum seekers led to a collapse in public trust in the EU. The flow has since been slowed, with arrivals in Italy and Greece in recent months having diminished to a trickle. But the legacy of 2015 continues to cast a shadow over European politics, as shown by strong support for the anti-immigration Alternative fur Deutschland party in last week’s German elections. EU officials estimate around 200,000 people will attempt to enter the EU illegally this year, in line with the long-term average over the previous two decades, but even this may no longer be politically sustainable. To win back public trust, the EU needs to show it is in full control of its borders. CONTINUE AT SITE
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