The State of the European Union. The European Parliament faces its most important elections yet

THE STATE OF THE EUROPEAN UNION 52 The EU has had to face repeated setbacks throughout its history. However, it has always managed to get back on the path to integration with decisive steps towards a deeper relation- ship, even after difficult moments such as the “Empty Chair Crisis” triggered by de Gaulle in the mid-1960s or the failure of the first EMU plan in the late 1970s. The passing of the Single European Act (1987) and the treaties of Maastricht (1993), Amsterdam (1999) and Nice (2003) brought the EU into a “golden age” of integration with decisive political and economic progress. However, the failure of the EU Cons- titutional Treaty in 2005 ended the period of strong integration, and there have been no breakthroughs since then. In fact, the EU has reached a dead end in various areas. The decisive cause of this period of integra- tion stagnation can be found in the increasing trend towards right-wing populism, which has been bolstered particularly by the austerity poli- cies introduced in the wake of the financial crisis in 2008/9. The politics of re-nationalisation gave rise to Brexit, they prevent a solidarity-based refugee distribution policy, they block any deci- sive progress in the reform of the eurozone, and they are the key force behind the PIS in Poland and Fidesz in Hungary. Re-nationalisation and refugee policy The rise of right-wing populism has exacerbated conflict on migration in the EU. There has been a massive policy of exclusion: a tightening up of asylum law, more deportations, the EU-Turkey agreement, expansion of Frontex, and strength- ened cooperation with Libya. This has led to a marked reduction in the number of refugees, but no solution has yet been found to the key ques- tions of the uneven refugee burden on EU states and the implementation of EU distribution deci- sions to relieve Italy and Greece. The Visegrad states refuse to participate in distribution of refu- gees, and Italy in particular complains that it has been abandoned by the EU. The European Council summit in June 2018 decided on measures including sealing the con- tinent off further (strengthening Frontex and the Libyan coastguard), building “disembarka- tion platforms” in third countries (detaining mi- grants caught during flight to clarify their sta- tus), and building “internal centres” in member states (detaining refugees to clarify their status and introduction of resettlement measures “re- gardless of the Dublin reform”) (European Council, June 2018). Even if the EU goes further down the path towards a right-wing populist refugee policy through these decisions, this policy will hardly resolve the conflicts between member states. This is because it has not been established which North-African states are prepared to build this type of “disembarkation platform” 1 , nor which states want to take the refugees they would send to the EU. Nor has it been determined which states should set up the “internal centres”, and which are prepared to participate in the related resettlement measures, because the voluntary principle takes precedence; the EU has accepted this in order to be able to make any decisions. The EU’s acceptance of the voluntary princi- ple legitimises the behaviour of the Visegrad states, which has broken agreements, and ulti- mately makes it impossible to act in case of con- flicts between member states. States will con- tinue to be unequally burdened, and not all states will be involved in distribution of migrants 1  Until December 2018, no African state had agreed to build such a “disembarkation platform”!