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THE STATE OF THE EUROPEAN UNION
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more aggressive approach to policy. However, arguably the most concern-
ing impact of all and the great challenge of our time is inequality. This is
symbolic of the era in which we live and Dauderstät’s analysis shows how
nominal economic growth has been unequally distributed among social
classes, regions and states. Wages have stagnated, poverty and exclusion
have spread and unemployment has become the painful scourge of south-
ern Europe.
The EU does not have the means to address the problem, since social
policies are the responsibility of its member states. As a result, the EU lacks
a social dimension. Nor does it have the tax powers that are key to the
recovery: tax havens persist, some in the heart of Europe, and tax harmo-
nisation is simply non-existent. Instead, we see fiscal dumping, especially
in the case of corporation tax, Ireland being a case in point. Economic
impotence at EU level, except for controlling public deficits, highlights one
of the hypothetical objectives of any political union, namely social cohe-
sion. Moreover, the disintegration of this cohesion works to undermine the
legitimacy of the very political structures that should make it possible.
Without having emerged from the crisis, Europe has fallen prey to
events that once again shows its weaknesses, this time in the form of the
refugee crisis. The real crisis, however, is not one of refugees but of the
EU’s inability to respond. We know the roots of the crisis lie in the war in
Syria, which has dragged on for over five years, causing the EU to experi-
ence one of its most painful and embarrassing moments in terms of hu-
man rights. To date, of the millions of people displaced by the war, eight
million have remained in Syria, while a further four million have escaped
to refugee camps in Lebanon, Jordan and especially Turkey. With hundreds
of thousands of people heading for Europe, the situation has finally come
to a head. The result has been horrific suffering, with refugees drowning
in the Mediterranean and arduous journeys on which children have paid
the greatest price.
Never before has the fissure at the heart of the EU been so strongly felt,
between member states on the one hand and the common institutions in
Brussels on the other. The European Commission’s warnings and attempts
to relocate refugees in Greece and Italy, and to resettle those who have
not yet reached Europe, have come to nothing. Its efforts have been frus-
trated by unprecedented border closures by EU countries, leaving tens of
thousands of refugees trapped indefinitely, and resulting in an agreement
between the EU and Turkey that directly contravenes the Geneva Conven-
tion. As Estrella Galán and Paloma Favieres show in this report, the refugee
crisis is in fact a European crisis. The number of people involved is less than
0.2 % of the EU’s population and could be assimilated into its social and