, Columnist
A New Refugee Crisis Could Break the EU
The European Union has failed to reform its migrant system since 2015. That’s why it’s now vulnerable to Turkish blackmail.
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Photographer: Sakis Mitrolidis/AFP via Getty Images
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The chaos of 2015, when more than a million refugees came to the European Union within a year, caused lasting fractures between and within the bloc’s countries. Now growing numbers of migrants are once again crossing into the EU from Turkey.
It’s too early to tell whether this mounting crisis could become another “2015.” But it’s already clear that it’s blowback for the EU’s utter failure to reform its migration system in the past five years — a failure that leaves it open to blackmail by cynical autocrats like Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.