The EU Story

On page one news from yesterday, there was this odd German criticism to arrive on the EU.

For a number of months, the EU has been on this theme of forcing migrants and asylum seekers out of camps in Italy and Greece....into EU countries.  To make this work, you needed a quota system, and you needed the 28 members of the EU to accept their quota....period.

Well....it hasn't worked.

In particular, several eastern European countries have suggested that they won't abide by a quota established by the EU. In their cases, they have a process existing on immigration, and you need to apply....show skills....provide a real identification of yourself....and go through a process.  In the EU plan, it'd just be a plane landing and unloading a hundred folks, and a week later....another plane landing and unloading a number of folks. No review.  No denial. 

So in public this week, the EU Council President (Tusk) said the quotas are ineffective, and it's now to the level of dividing up the EU.  In some counties, with elections coming up....there are actually opposition parties using the quota game to convince the public to vote against the standing party. 

So from the news.....there was a fair bit of criticism by Germany's Chancellor Merkel over this admitting of the quota failures.

Presently, the countries with the serious burden are Greece and Italy.  Both were led to believe (at least two years ago)....that the EU could fix this camp problem and shift the 180,000 refugees out....flushing them into the other countries of the EU.

Part of the problem here, if you study the whole landscape, is that the EU doesn't really say that these 180,000 are the end of the problem.  There are likely tens of thousands in the funnel and likely will be in Italy or Greece within the next year.  So even if you were capable of saying OK to quota version 1.0.....in a year....some EU guy would stand up and say there's a whole new crowd of migrants, and you have to accept another 10,000.  There's virtually no end to this game, if you think about how the EU arranged the game to be played out.

What happens here now?  To get all 28 members of the EU on the same script for this issue, is now impossible.  This talk in Germany of countries being forced out of the EU?  That's probably not going to help matters. 

The ability of the EU to say 'no' on mass immigration?  Oddly, it just doesn't ever come up. 

The affect of sending 10,000 migrants into a country with 10-percent unemployment?  It's also a topic that is never openly discussed. 

The issue of various countries have a very minimum support apparatus for migrants, compared to Germany?  That's also a topic which never comes up. 

The topic of migrants being 'forced' into a country, which they don't want to immigrate into (that they have a preferred choice of the UK, Germany or France)?  Oh, it's best not to bring this topic up with a German.  Add on the fact that once in the no-desire country...what keeps the guy there? A virtual unknown.  He likely packs up in a couple of weeks, and walks into Germany.

Of all the dead-end topics that the EU could ever get itself into.....this is probably problem number one.