The chronic inability of EU countries to agree on how to deal with migration threatens to derail the implementation of the bloc’s other plans. At the end of the summit in Granada, Spain, European leaders were unable to agree on a common position. Some events had to be cancelled because of the scandal. Disputes over migration in the EU overshadowed such topics as the expansion of the bloc and assistance to Ukraine. This is reported by Bloomberg.
Meeting in southern Spain, EU leaders planned to discuss accepting new members, find ways to increase their geopolitical influence and agree to strengthen their common defence capabilities. And all these plans were derailed by the immigration controversy.
At the summit in Spain’s Granada, French President Emmanuel Macron and Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni provoked a diplomatic scandal by agreeing to hold an unscheduled meeting with British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak on migration.
Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez considered it a distraction from the official talks already under his leadership and in annoyance cancelled a joint press conference with Sunak that was to have been held on Thursday, informed sources said.
Earlier, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban said attempts to force his country to accept immigration decisions made by other countries could be compared to sexual violence.
“Tensions are rising because immigration is really becoming a sore point in European politics. Many leaders prefer not to hedge on it because they have seen more than once how the topic of immigration has put an end to the careers of their colleagues. But the collective inability to find a solution to the problem extends to most other pressing issues,” Bloomberg writes.
According to a French official present at the talks, the scandal that erupted this week highlighted fundamental flaws in the EU’s mechanisms, namely the bloc’s cumbersome decision-making processes and its uneasy treatment of workers who move between member states.