Remember the European dream? An ever closer union founded on respect for human dignity, freedom, democracy, equality, the rule of law and respect for human rights? Its dead: it is now official EU policy that refugees should be left to drown:
The European Union has condemned rescue boats picking up drowning refugees in the Mediterranean, in a dramatic hardening of the bloc’s border policy that brings it in line with the continent’s anti-immigration populists.
After a summit in Brussels EU leaders backed the approach of Italy’s new populist government to the boats, suggesting the vessels should stay away and could be breaking the law by picking up those in distress.
A communiqué issued by the European Council warns the vessels’ operators that they should defer to the Libyan coastguard, which NGOs say amounts to “deliberately condemning vulnerable people to be trapped in Libya, or die at sea”.
And even before it was announced, Italy was lying to rescue boats to kill refugees, at a cost of hundreds of lives. And if they make it ashore, the EU is now talking about Australian-style concentration camps: refugee gulags in a continent with a dirty history of sticking the Other in camps and exterminating them.
If you ever thought that the European project was worth believing in, its not any more. Their craven politicians gave in to racists and actual fascists rather than standing up for the values they were supposed to protect. The EU is now the sort of union decent countries should quit, rather than continue to belong to.
