THE EUROPEAN MIGRATION CRISIS. WHICH CONSEQUENCES AFFECTING THE STABILITY OF THE EUROPEAN UNION?

Abstract

The European Union was heralded as one of the most astounding successes of the post-war reconstruction (from both political and economic perspectives), an evolutive process which began after the Franco-German reconciliation and was deeply influenced by the fall of the Soviet Union and the Former Eastern Bloc accession in 2004 and 2007 respectively. However, the EU Construction Process was deemed as flawed by its celerity, the differences between the East and West being as evident as they come after almost half a decade of totalitarian rule in the former. The question posed then, has the EU enlarged too fast? seems now, in retrospect, as not only justifiable but obtusely legitimate. Leaving aside the economic perspective, the European construction process has left the EU Social-Democrats at a severe disadvantage, which in turn has only strengthened the Right and shifted the electorate’s sympathy towards everything considered non-mainstream. The withering of the EU Social-Democracy, which relinquished its classic ideology in favour of that of the Construction Project, losing the trust of the people in the process, can be perceived as one of the Union’s biggest political weakness. Yet the issue at hand is best explained not by trying to frame the consequences, but to understand the underlying causes: the recent Brexit and the promise of a Frexit, the rise of right-wing parties, the increase in racist and bigoted political rhetoric and the spreading of populism, are all of these separate incidents or are they interconnected? Simplistically yes, but it is also associated with how the citizens of the member States identify themselves: economically as European, yet identitary as National. This poses some serious questions on the capacity of a weakened EU to overcome the multiple crises which affect it.