Seven Worrying Trends in the European Refugee Crisis

Sea Storm, Blue Moon
Courtesy stainedglassartist/Flickr

This article was originally published by the European Council on Foreign Relations on 13 October 2016.

EU leaders could soon come to regret having crossed their fingers and moved the refugee crisis off the urgent pile in their in-tray.

As part of his final UN General Assembly, President Obama hosted a leaders’ summit on refugees. In his speech he termed the global refugee crisis one of ‘the most urgent tests of our time’. But the list of commitments coming out of the summit did not live up to this description. The Bratislava EU summit earlier this month barely touched on refugee issues among the list of priorities to address, and there seems to be a general sense that Europe has more or less weathered the refugee storm that appeared so threatening in 2015.

There is some truth to this – for now. The number of sea crossings to the EU in the first nine months of 2016 was indeed down, at around 300,000, compared to 520,000 in 2015. But despite this there are a number of worrying trends that EU leaders would be foolish to ignore.

The UK Government’s Brexit Strategy: What We Know So Far

Brexit, the painting
Courtesy Shakespearesmonkey/Flickr

This article was originally published by the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR) on 6 September 2016.

Theresa May seems to be looking for a compromise around freedom of movement in order to retain access to the Single Market.

It has been a long summer for those of us wondering what exactly Brexit is going to mean in practice. Since the initial commotion over the appointments of Boris Johnson (Foreign Secretary) David Davis (Brexit negotiations) and Liam Fox (International Trade) subsided, there has been an eerie quiet over the summer break about what the UK’s strategy would be for the forthcoming negotiations.

Beyond Prime Minister Theresa May’s mantra that ‘Brexit means Brexit’, a drip feed of economic information showing that the anticipated post-Brexit crash in consumer confidence has not – for now – emerged, and speculation about whether May’s summer holidays in Switzerland were in part spent studying the EFTA model, there has been precious little actual information.

The past few days have felt like something of a watershed – a genuine start of term – with Theresa May’s visit to the G20 meeting in China, and the House of Commons debate on a petition for a second referendum forcing the government to unveil a little of what they are thinking. So what do we know now that we didn’t before?