The term ‘Merkiavelli’ depicts the political affinity between Machiavelli’s Prince and Angela Merkel. This emerges due to opportunities created by the chaos of the global financial crisis and its repercussions on the Euro.
Ukraine is divided between pro-European and pro-Russian choices. The foreign policy choices that it makes over the coming months could have significance in terms of its relationship with the EU.
The process of European unity did not diminish the ability of EU countries to control their own borders, but it has limited their ability to limit unwanted internal migration.
As the best way to appraise the significance of its border disorder, the EU needs to realize that both its external and internal borders are just different levels of the same political theatre.
A shipwreck off the Italian island of Lampedusa put the issue of immigration back on the EU’s political agenda. A new holistic and balanced policy should include the opening of channels for legal migration.
Most governments of the EU are now forced to dance to the tunes of the extreme right. In that respect, the Greek far right stands out as the ugliest reflection in the deforming mirror of the dark side of the EU.
The cases of Latvia and Bosnia & Herzegovina demonstrate that the effectiveness of the EU External Incentives Model has dramatically reduced since the enlargements of 2004 and 2007.
The Lampedusa crisis will primarily serve to rationalize intensified surveillance of the maritime domain and the creation of market opportunities in an increasingly securitized Mediterranean.
If the response to migration is for Europe to make its southern border even more dangerous to cross and to detain more migrants in ever more appalling decisions, then we have lurched in the wrong direction.
The December Council is too important to risk emerging as a non-event. If CSDP is to have a future, it is time to ask some probing, fundamental questions.
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