Europe Faces a Dilemma: Values vs Politics

• 09.14.2015, 16:21
•  Europe,  "Insight" Analytical Center

The united Europe is today facing some serious value challenges due to the migration problems. There is a fundamental dilemma. socio-economic conditions of its citizens and the task of providing their security, on one hand, and their own value system based on humanitarian principles on the other hand, that is to adopt an appropriate approach towards immigrants.

To illustrate the seriousness of the problem simply it should be noted that according to the UN Refugee Commission, this year only 336 thousand migrants reached Europe through Mediterranean. This situation has led some experts to call it "the worst one since the 2nd World War."

Obviously, the migrantion issue is not limited only to accepting them, it is a more complex issue, which contains several components.

 - Social security. In case of the acceptance of migrants, there is a need to provide them with accommodation, social assistance, employment and training opportunities. This is, of course, a costly and complex process, which not all countries can afford (for example, Germany has planned to spend some 3 billion euros on migrant issues this year).

- Security problems. According to various sources, around 4,000 militants of "Islamic State" mingling with the migration flows, have penetrated to Europe, which is a serious challenge to the security of the European countries, given the recent organized terrorist acts.

 - Integration of migrants. Given the diversity of immigrants, their education, professional skills, religious and ideological views, it will also be quite difficult for them to be fully integrated into the host country's social and political life. In these terms not successful experience of the integration of Muslim communities in different European countries so far can have a negative impact.

These issues are quite serious challenges, and the EU is forced to choose either to accept immigrants and try to overcome these challenges, or go against their own value system and to adopt a more restrictive stance, with sending back a great number of migrants.

In the current chaos it is possible to meet many other forms of the disruption of communication between the real politics and the declared values. In particular, a number of countries, concerning the quote issue on EU's migration policy have already announced that they will accept only a limited number of migrants provided that the latter are Christians. In value terms, it is at least not clear how a humanitarian value-based organization like EU can show a religious-based selective approach towards migrants. While a number of other countries are totally refusing to adopt migrants trying to throw their burden on the EU leading countries - mainly Germany and France. All this in turn suggests that the EU is now facing another value crisis, the pan-European solidarity, which has become a victim of private interests.

 In summary, we can conclude that migration crisis just made more explicit in recent years the regular crisis of values. In the current situation, the EU should make a choice. To revise either its policy, or its value grounds.