Optimists affirm that the EU-UK agreement has a positive side: London cannot veto the will of other member states pursuing an “ever closer Union". This is true, but only formally. Italiano.
The real heart of Europe lies in the practice of pluralism – a quality abandoned for a large part of the past century, and then rediscovered. Do we want it to endure?
Talk in Brussels among non-governmental organisations and parliamentarians is that the EU lacks a strategy to address human rights violations in the European neighbourhood. However, what if the EU has a strategy?
“If progressives focus too much on the institutional sphere, the right wing can take the streets – they’ve done it before. If we don’t, someone else will.” Interview with the author of Hope is a Promise. (5,800 words)
It is at once an informal encampment of makeshift shelters; a town under construction, with shops, restaurants and schools; and, a space subject to institutional violence, at risk of imminent destruction.
The hotspot works as a preemptive frontier, with the double goal of blocking migrants at Europe’s southern borders, and simultaneously impeding the highest number possible of refugees from claiming asylum.
These hold grave implications for periphery countries: the unforeseen implosion of – or ‘forced exit’ from – the monetary union on one hand; endless suffering within the EMU on the other.
As a Spanish national living in London, I urge you to vote for Brexit. European integration is a political necessity for which the UK is a serious obstacle.
Today, it is entirely possible to be a Eurosceptic while opposing withdrawal from the EU, seeking further European cooperation within a democratic framework preventing the empowerment of big business.
Either way, there is no way to vote in the referendum for a strong UK in Europe – only for Cameron’s new opted-out, ‘Little England’ model.
The ‘hotspot’ system for migrants remains an experiment, but it entails the implementation at the national level of human-rights-violating policies elaborated at the EU level.
