On the surface the 'Arab Spring' is welcomed in Europe as the democratic awakening of a people. The authoritarian regimes in North Africa are crumbling: hurrah! But beneath the rhetoric lurk serious concerns about instability in Europe's neighbourhood.
It has brought an end to lucrative arms deals with dictators and disrupted the oil trade. But this doesn't excite the people of Europe as much as the threat from illegal immigrants. So this is what Europe's stagnant Right have seized upon.
Thousands of Tunisians have risked their lives on small boats trying to reach the Italian island of Lampedusa. Those that made it were given a foil cape and a bottle of mineral water to suck on by the Italian authorities. Then they were left to languish in the open for nearly two weeks. Italy wanted help from her EU friends. But these friends did not help.
So Italy started shipping the Tunisians to the mainland and granting them temporary residence permits. In principle the migrants could now enjoy the benefits of freedom of movement across the Schengen area. France assumed that these migrants would now all head for their great capital Paris and promptly started checking trains crossing their border.
Sarkozy and Berlusconi engineered a little crisis and called the EU's freedom of movement into question.
Is this really about a few thousand desperate Tunisian migrants? No, this is about undermining community spirit and clawing back national privileges. In the wake of Sarko's and Silvio's antics, the Commission has little power to reign in similar action from other member states.
Ludicrously, Denmark has reinstated checks on its border with Germany and the bridge from Sweden
So rather than fully supporting the Arab Spring as a united body, EU member states have used it as an excuse to pander to the xenophobic far right. When the going gets tough, there is a marked lack of community spirit.
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