[D66] Eurocrisis: Einde van Schengen, einde van Euro, einde van EuroUnie ?

[Dr. Marc-Alexander Fluks]

Bron:   Reuters
Datum:  18 januari 2016
Auteur: Alastair Macdonald and Noah Barkin
URL:    
http://uk.reuters.com/article/us-europe-migrants-alarm-insight-idUKKCN0UW107


End of Europe? Berlin, Brussels' shock tactic on migrants
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The Germans, founders and funders of the postwar union, shut their 
borders to refugees in a bid for political survival by the chancellor 
who let in a million migrants. And then -- why not? -- they decide to 
revive the Deutschmark while they're at it. That is not the fantasy of 
diehard Eurosceptics but a real fear articulated at the highest levels 
in Berlin and Brussels.

Chancellor Angela Merkel, her ratings hit by crimes blamed on asylum 
seekers at New Year parties in Cologne, and EU chief executive 
Jean-Claude Juncker both said as much last week. Juncker echoed Merkel 
in warning that the central economic achievements of the common market 
and the euro are at risk from incoherent, nationalistic reactions to 
migration and other crises. He renewed warnings that Europe is on its 
'last chance', even if he still hoped it was not 'at the beginning of 
the end'. Merkel, facing trouble among her conservative supporters as 
much as from opponents, called Europe 'vulnerable' and the fate of the 
euro 'directly linked' to resolving the migration crisis -- highlighting 
the risk of at the very least serious economic turbulence if not a 
formal dismantling of EU institutions.

Some see that as mere scare tactics aimed at fellow Europeans by leaders 
with too much to lose from an EU collapse - Greeks and Italians have 
been seen to be dragging their feet over controlling the bloc's 
Mediterranean frontier and eastern Europeans who benefit from German 
subsidies and manufacturing supply chain jobs have led hostility to 
demands that they help take in refugees. Germans are also getting little 
help from EU co-founder France, whose leaders fear a rising 
anti-immigrant National Front, or the bloc's third power, Britain, 
consumed with its own debate on whether to just quit the European club 
altogether.

So, empty threat or no, with efforts to engage Turkey's help showing 
little sign yet of preventing migrants reaching Greek beaches, German 
and EU officials are warning that without a sharp drop in arrivals or a 
change of heart in other EU states to relieve Berlin of the lonely task 
of housing refugees, Germany could shut its doors, sparking wider crisis 
this spring.


German warnings

With Merkel's conservative allies in the southern frontier state of 
Bavaria demanding she halt the mainly Muslim asylum seekers ahead of 
tricky regional elections in March, her veteran finance minister 
delivered one of his trademark veiled threats to EU counterparts of what 
that could mean for them. 'Many think this is a German problem,' 
Wolfgang Schaeuble said in meetings with fellow EU finance ministers in 
Brussels. 'But if Germany does what everyone expects, then we'll see 
that it's not a German problem -- but a European one.'

Senior Merkel allies are working hard to stifle the kind of 
parliamentary party rebellion that threatened to derail bailouts which 
kept Greece in the euro zone last year. But pressure is mounting for 
national measures, such as border fences, which as a child of East 
Germany Merkel has said she cannot countenance. 'If you build a fence, 
it's the end of Europe as we know it,' one senior conservative said. 'We 
need to be patient.'

A senior German official noted that time is running out, however. 'The 
chancellor has been asking her party for more time,' he said. 'But ... 
that narrative ... is losing the persuasiveness it may have had in 
October or November. If you add in the debate about Cologne, she faces 
an increasingly difficult situation.' He noted that arrivals had not 
fallen sharply over the winter months as had been expected. 'You can 
only imagine what happens when the weather improves,' he said.


Schengen fears

Merkel and Juncker explicitly linked new national frontier controls 
across Europe's passport-free Schengen zone to a collapse of the single 
market at the core of the bloc, and of the euro. Both would ravage jobs 
and the economy. 'Without Schengen ... the euro has no point,' Juncker 
told a New Year news conference on Friday. Historic national resentments 
were re-emerging, he added, accusing his generation of EU leaders of 
squandering the legacy of the union's founders, survivors of World War 
Two.

Merkel has not suggested -- yet -- that Berlin could follow neighbors 
like Austria and Denmark in further tightening border checks to deny 
entry to irregular migrants. But she has made clear how Europe might 
suffer. 'No one can pretend that you can have a common currency without 
being able to cross borders relatively easily,' she said at a business 
event last week.

In private, German officials are more explicit. 'We have until March, 
the summer maybe, for a European solution,' said a second German 
official. 'Then Schengen goes down the drain.' A senior EU official was 
equally blunt: 'There is a big risk that Germany closes. From that, no 
Schengen ... There is a risk that the February summit could start a 
countdown to the end.'

The next summit of EU leaders one month from now follows meetings last 
year that were marked by agreement on a migration strategy as well as 
rows over failures to implement it. Of the 160,000 asylum seekers EU 
leaders agreed in September to distribute among member states, fewer 
than 300 have been moved. Berlin and Brussels continue to press for more 
distribution across Europe. But few place much hope in that - one senior 
German official calls it 'flogging a dead horse'.


Turkish key

EU leaders' hope is for help from Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan, a 
man many of them see as an embryonic dictator. Berlin is pressing for 
more EU cash for Ankara, beyond an agreed 3 billion euros, which Italy 
is blocking. Some Germans suggest simply using German funds to stem the 
flow from Turkey.

EU officials say it is too early to panic. Arrivals have fallen this 
month. U.N. data show them running in January at half the 3,500 daily 
rate of December. Progress includes a move to let some of the 2.1 
million Syrian refugees in Turkey take jobs. The EU will fund more 
schools for refugee children.

Yet EU Migration Commissioner Dimitris Avramopoulos, who travels to 
Berlin on Monday, told the European Parliament last week: 'The situation 
is getting worse.' The refugee crisis was jeopardizing 'the very core of 
the European Union', he said, offering no grounds to be optimistic other 
than that 'optimism is our last line of our defense'.

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(c) 2016 Reuters