At least four E.U. states, including Hungary, the Czech
Republic, Slovakia, and Poland, rejected a federal plan on September 11, 2015
that would have imposed refugee quotas on the states. The failure to come up
with a fair allocation of migrants by state threatened to undo the borderless
travel within the E.U. The tremendous influx of mostly Syrian refugees exacerbated
differences between the states; given their power even at the federal level of
the E.U., the infighting was a risk to the viability of the E.U. itself. I
contend that structural flaws in the E.U. itself unnecessarily compromised the
Union from quashing the risk to itself by solving the refugee problem. The
state governments were clearly not in unison in dealing with the problem
themselves.
Refugees held up in Hungary because the state's government was overwhelmed. Why didn't the E.U. step in to help? (Mauricio Limo/NYT).
