I moved to Europe eight years ago from Toronto, and in only one of those years did I see Europe at its best. That was in 2007, the year before the financial collapse. The economies of the European Union were expanding, unemployment was fairly low and there was no genuine crisis of any sort, even if there were pockets of despair in a few of the region's countries.
Surely this was some sort of economic and social paradise. Peace, prosperity, freedom, open borders – the founding principles and goals of the EU seemed to have been achieved, more or less, perhaps through sheer good luck, but maybe because the back-of-the-envelope design of the European project was translating well into functioning reality.
On Wednesday morning, I sat in a coffee bar in central Rome, absorbed by headlines unimaginable a year ago, let alone in 2007. The refugee crisis was getting more desperate by the day. Hungary's 175-kilometre fence wall along the Serbian frontier, a menacing structure topped by rolls of razor wire, was fully intact, creating a crush of humanity on the Serbian side. They chanted: "No food, no water, let us cross the border."
Some of the refugees, no doubt mixed with economic migrants from "safe" countries, reacted by traipsing west, to Croatia, in the hope of pushing north through Slovenia into Italy or Austria, then on to Germany or Scandinavia – the promised lands.
Meanwhile, armadas of overstuffed refugee boats from Turkey and Libya were setting out for Greece and Italy. Many refugees died along the way. On Wednesday, the International Organization for Migration said that, since the weekend alone, an estimated 72 migrants had drowned between Turkey and the Greek islands.
Border controls have gone up in half a dozen countries, including the Czech Republic and Slovakia, ending the notion of free movement between the 22 EU countries in the passport-free Schengen area. Germany triggered the border clampdown on Sunday when, with its southern border overwhelmed, it halted refugee-laden trains from Austria. Hungary quickly declared a state of emergency, rushed to finish its fence on the Serbian border, passed a law making it illegal to cross or damage the fence and announced it would build yet another barrier, this time along parts of the Romania frontier.
By midweek, Fortress Europe was taking shape and effective walls – the border controls – were going up within the EU, only 26 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall. The unravelling of the concepts that had built an open EU were well under way. With the refugee surge showing no signs of easing, thanks to the endless civil war in Syria and a wrecked, lawless Libya, questions about whether the EU faces an existential crisis are entirely valid.
The refugee crisis could be one crisis too far for the EU. The bloc's new motto could be: Divided we fall, united we fall.
After the 2008 financial meltdown, the EU and the 18 countries that shared the euro at the time (now 19) were never the same. That crisis exposed the inherent weaknesses of a currency that tried to unite such disparate countries as Germany and Greece, the former a disciplined industrial powerhouse, the latter a perennial financial basket case without much employment beyond tourism. Greece came close to leaving the euro twice, the first time in 2012, the second earlier this year. If it had, the cherished notion that the euro was irreversible would have been exposed as a con job. Greece could still leave. It is trapped in economic hell, proving that the euro is not a one-size-fits-all currency and never will be.
The refugee crisis is a much bigger beast than the Greek crisis. It affects more countries and has set them charging off in all directions in an each-country-for-itself strategy, which should not be surprising, given that each of the EU member states has its own immigration policy. But there is a common link between the refugee and the Greek crisis – Germany.
Germany is the EU's most powerful country in every sense; what it wants is what it gets, even if the result can be more divisive than unifying.
Germany and its northern European allies did not want Greece to default on its crushing debt in 2010, partly to protect German banks, which then had lavish exposure to the country. Instead, it pretty much forced a bailout onto Greece, then another and, only a couple of months ago, yet another. If Greece had been allowed to default five years ago, the euro zone crisis might have been downgraded from crisis to annoyance. Instead, a country with less than 2 per cent of the economic output of the euro zone came close to shredding the its southern flank.
Commendably, Germany took the high moral ground in the refugee crisis. It said it would grant asylum to all Syrians who reached its borders. The pledge, predictably, led to a surge in arrivals; Germany alone said it expected to take 800,000 refugees this year, a figure later raised to a million. When the human onslaught created chaos along its Austrian frontier, it begged for mercy. It argued for mandatory refugee resettlement quotas within the EU countries. Then it imposed border controls.
The proposal for mandatory controls created low-grade panic in many central and eastern EU countries. Some said they couldn't cope with more refugees. Others said mandatory quotas were simply unworkable – never mind that they were alien to the EU's Dublin regulations for applications from asylum seekers. Various interior ministers noted that most refugees wouldn't stay resettled; they'd want to move to job-rich Germany. Earlier this week, Slovak Interior Minister Robert Kalinak said, "It's not possible to hold migrants in the countries by force."
Germany's effort to impose mandatory quotas plan fell apart this week, no surprise.
So far, there has been no unity in solving the refugee crisis. The EU may not shatter under the weight of the refugee crisis, but it could, given the sheer size of the problem.
Already, the notion of open travel – perhaps the EU's crowning achievement – is dying. Britain, a member of the EU but not of Schengen, is watching the refugee crisis with a mix of horror and fascination. The crisis could well see Britain leave the EU when the in-out referendum is held next year or in 2017. Many Britons see the EU as a failing project, one pulverized by problems, big and small, which were allowed to transform into crises at alarming speed. Why be part of that?
In central Rome, life goes on as it always has. But only a few kilometres away, near the Tiburtina train station, refugee camps and centres are filling up. With the walls and border controls now appearing in the EU, the asylum seekers have no idea where they will go; neither do the Italians. Like the European project itself, the refugees are entirely unsure of their fate.
Eric Reguly