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EU fears disintegration over refugee crisis: Pundit

Thursday, 17 March 2016 7:49 AM [ Last Update: Thursday, 17 March 2016 7:48 AM ]

Children play as people wait for a Red Cross aid distribution at the port of Piraeus, Greece, March 16, 2016. (Photo by AFP)

Press TV has interviewed Lawrence Davidson, a professor at West Chester University, to discuss the upcoming EU summit in Brussels on the refugee crisis.

The following is a rough transcription of the interview.

Press TV: That is quite a large list of things that need to be accomplished before the EU summit. Do you think that’s likely to happen?

Davidson: I think probably the desire on the part of the EU to try to stem the flow of these refugees will in fact bring them to give the Turks what they want, at least in terms of these published demands.

My problem with this is it is based…, the agreement is based on an assumption that the Turks or the Greeks or somebody else or anybody else can actually control the flow of immigrants towards Europe. So what do you do with all the immigrants that are coming up towards Eastern Europe? What do you do with them? What do you do to actually control the flow of refugees coming across the Mediterranean from Libya or other places?

The assumption is that the Greeks or the Turks or somebody or the Italians can actually control this and I suspect that they cannot.

Press TV: So are you saying essentially that this will at some point obviously fall apart because Europe itself is very divided, so this is very dangerous for the entire euro project, isn’t it?

Davidson: That is right. I mean the reason why they are willing to deal so readily with Turkish demands is because of the fear that if they cannot somehow control the flow or appear to be controlling the flow, that essentially the EU can disintegrate because of a sort of nationalist backlash against policy of bringing in refugees, even in a controlled fashion there might be a backlash which results in serious damage to EU relations.

So it is an extraordinarily dangerous situation and that is why the Turks are getting the cooperation they are.

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