AP Photo/Petros KaradjiasDemonstrators burn a European Union flag during a rally supporting the no vote for the upcoming referendum outside European Union office in Athens, Thursday, July 2, 2015.
Slovakian Prime Minister Robert Fico wrote on Tuesday that if the European Union did not get the migration crisis under control this year, the 28-nation bloc would collapse.
The staunchly anti-immigration prime minister wrote in business daily Hospodarske Noviny that "whether someone likes it or not," Europe needed to get the immigration crisis under control in the next 11 months, Reuters reports.
"To overlook growing tension, nervousness and fear among people or the fact that EU does not have a real solution to the migration crisis while the migration wave continues ... could have catastrophic consequences," Fico wrote.
"Whether someone likes it or not, 2016 will be the year when the EU will either get the migration crisis under control or collapse."
Fico is one of many EU politicians to call for the bloc to put more effort into tackling what is the biggest migration crisis to hit the continent since the Second World War. But the EU does not seem any closer to tackling the problem now than it did last year.
Fico has previously called multiculturalism "a fiction," and his government filed a lawsuit against the EU over its plan to resettle 160,000 asylum seekers throughout the 28 member states. In 2014, Slovakia accepted granted asylum to 14 people in total, according to The Washington Post.
Although not everyone's prediction for the future of the EU is as bleak as Fico's, the persisting failure by EU countries to put forward a pan-European plan on how to deal with the migrant crisis, combined with shaky economies and a rise in populism, is fuelling long-term fears about the future of the European Union.
Greece is at the centre of another European crisis
So far, 2016 is also showing some consistency with the previous year, Greece is again at the heart of another crisis facing the EU.
REUTERS/Giorgos MoutafisA Greek Coast Guard officer talks to refugees and migrants sitting on the deck of the Ayios Efstratios Coast Guard vessel following a rescue operation at open sea between the Turkish coast and the Greek island of Lesbos, February 8, 2016."The return of a major Greek crisis is the direct consequence of Europe's deeper values (supranational governance, integration, and democracy) ceasing to function properly," Ian Bremmer, the president of the Eurasia Group told Business Insider in an email. "At a minimum, it's the effective end of the Schengen agreement on open borders, which carries with it a significant trade and productivity cost."
Amid growing pressure by EU officials and the threat of being excluded from the Schengen zone if it continued to fail to control its borders, Greece announced on Monday that it would have refugee reception centres up and running by the February 15 deadline.
The willingness to blame Greece and repeated threats to cut the country from the passport-free zone also clearly shows a lack of solidarity between the members of the European Union.
"Greece is being blamed for not providing security to its external borders and letting in all these refugees … something Athens has no capability to address," Bremmer said.
In January 2016 alone, over 68,000 migrants landed in Greece, according to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, compared to 1,694 in January 2015. So far in February, the average daily arrival rate of arrivals for Greece stands at 1,318 and those numbers will start increasing dramatically once the weather improves.
ReutersA Slovenian soldier sets up barbed wire barriers in the village Gibina, Slovenia, November 11, 2015."During the Grexit crisis, the European political response was strong. German leadership was committed to exerting sustained pressure on Greece to accept austerity measures … and equally sustained pressure on other European governments to ensure support for a bailout," Bremmer said, "Not so this time... Political life is becoming much more challenging for German chancellor Angela Merkel, and the pressure has gotten steadily worse in the past weeks."
Merkel has made a series of announcements over the last few weeks that show a reversal of the country's policy on asylum seekers, including the fact that Iraqis and Syrians will have to return to their countries once the war is over.
Germany has also started deporting people who do not qualify as refugees and added Algeria, Morocco, and Tunisia to their list of "safe countries" from which migrants will not be allowed in to Germany.
The chancellor also visited Turkey amid growing criticism concerning Turkey's consistent failure to stem the flow of migrants making their way to Europe.
The European Commissioner for enlargement Johannes Hahn, said last week that Turkey should be able to show evidence of an improvement on this issue by the time of the EU summit on migration takes place on February 18, something which seems increasingly unlikely.
Fico's comments come a week before the Visegrad group meeting, called by the Czech prime minister, Bohuslav Sobotka, a couple of weeks ago. The Visegrad Group is an alliance of fourCentral European states – Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, and Slovakia
Fico and Sobotka have called on the EU to have a new plan ready to secure its external borders until Greece is able to do more to stem the flow of refugees.
Yet with or without Greece, the EU does not seem to have a current plan, let along a new one.
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