The Syrian Refugee Crisis: Risks and Challenges for the European Union

Abstract

This Thesis focuses on the effects of the ongoing ‘Syrian refugee crisis’ on the viability and integrity of the European integration project: The European Union (EU). Once established as an imperative to eliminate prospects of new military conflicts between the major European nations after World War II (WWII), the European Union (EU) has ended up being the fundamental institution of co-operation among the European states on a broad spectrum of issues. However, the engagement of the EU in the U.S.-led so-called ‘war on terror’ and military interventions in Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya may have inadvertently destabilized the said regions, including more wars, the expansion of new terror groups, such as the Islamic state of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), and generated millions of refugees, a significant portion of whom have made their way to Europe through land and sea routes. The EU, in turn, given its own political and economic issues such as the Western-imposed Russian sanctions measures over the Ukrainian crisis, economic meltdown in Greece and the successful vote on secession by Great Britain from the EU (Brexit), appears to have failed to adequately respond to the current refugee crisis facing the continent. The refugee influx has put the EU’s integration project to the test it fails to endure by revealing intrinsic flaws in the EU’s institutional and legislative arrangements, lack of mutual consent and solidarity among the member states and internal political cleavages within the Union. The refugee crisis has also led to the escalation of centrifugal tendencies (suspension of the Schengen Agreement and return to national border controls) within the EU, solidification of Euro-skeptical and radical right-wing parties, and strengthening of an internal West-East division, thereby endangering the functioning and existence of the very idea of the European integration.