As Martin Jay illustrates, the EU’s immigration policies are problematic, but debt and currency issues can’t be ruled out as the sword upon which it falls. From Jay at strategic-culture.org:
The refugee flows are nothing new. And the games that poorer, weaker countries play by using them, have also been around for a while.
The Belarus border is just the most recent in a long list of examples how Brussels cannot fight back countries who use refugees as a weapon against the EU’s failed hegemony
For many erudite commentators who know the EU well, the scenes on the Poland-Belarus border felt a bit ‘déjà vu’. Once again, the EU’s failed policies when tackling immigration flows — which in many cases are as a direct result of propping up dictators or for dabbling in geopolitics — comes right back and smacks Brussels in the face. Perhaps Belarus is using Syrian refugees as a tool to hit back at Brussels and its bellicose sanctions-based so-called foreign policy. For journalists and analysts who lead with this argument, we can assume that many will be supporters of the EU project itself and are unable to see a bigger picture.
