Conviction and responsibility

One and a quarter million refugees applied for asylum in the Union in 2015, twice as many as the year before. The images were dramatic: small boats on the Mediterranean, handcarts on Balkan roads, full trains stranded on the way to the rich North. The influx of people looked to many like a mass migration, almost an invasion; and the public, in fearful bewilderment, had the impression the authorities had lost control. Could Europe act? Was Europe authorized to act?

The demand for action had a different character from that which accompanied previous crises. The Ukraine crisis of 2014–15 was a matter of war and peace; the Union itself had hardly any resources or powers to bring the conflict under control, so active intervention by the member states jointly was an obvious necessity. Moreover, application of the magnetic forces provided by the Brussels diplomatic toolkit, the showpiece being the association agreement with Kiev, had worked out badly. No one at that point, therefore, disputed the primacy of events-politics. In the fields of asylum and migration, by contrast, the Union had quite a few competences and regulations. The situation became unmanageable because the regulatory framework collapsed under divergent strategic interests and because of the disruptive impact of the situation on public opinion. For a long time Brussels was blind to the gap between what was administratively possible and what, in this exceptional situation, was politically required. Engagement by the highest political authority needed for events-politics was even actively hindered by some institutions, reinforcing the impression of a loss of control, of powerlessness.

The contrast with the euro crisis of 2010–12 is illustrative as well. To steer their poorly equipped currency through the storm, the leaders, at gunpoint, had both to design new tools and to deploy them immediately.