The 28 EU leaders don’t touch the thorny issues

From left to right: Dalia Grybauskaite, President of Lithuania and Angela Merkel, German Federal Chancellor, arriving at the EU Summit in Brussels. (Council of the European Union 24/10/2013).

The 28 EU leaders presently meeting in Brussels, seem to have chosen the ‘illegal migration’ and the ‘European pride’ issues as the main items on their agenda. This is the best way to avoid the burning social and economic issues, which torment “the richest continent” of the world, as the President of the European Parliament Martin Schulz, called Europe in his Press conference ahead of the European Summit.

In this way the political leadership of the European Union avoided focusing on the crucial economic and political issues, which were raised by the European Economic and Social Committee. Seemingly they preferred the ones which ‘sell’ best on 8 o’clock news. The EESC though had warned the 28 leaders, “that the Economic and Monetary Union could unravel, if its social dimension is not strengthened”. Despite that the 28 leaders choose to focus on migration and announced even stronger measures to protect ‘fortress Europe’. Today they plan to focus on the US National Security Agency‘s taping of EU citizens telecommunications and bank data. Of course they are expected to exorcise the US spying on German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s personal mobile telephone.

Avoiding the real issues

Of course both those themes, migration and US snooping on Europe, are of crucial importance. The problem is that the EU Summit has not chosen to focus on those two issues in order to solve them. The target is rather to use them in order to avoid tackling, and why not solving, the real problems, which torment the ‘richest continent’ of earth.

The Greek Prime Minister Antonis Samaras and the President of the European Parliament Martin Schulz became the main promoters of the migration affair. The fist of them is always at the mercy of Brussels and Berlin, for the survival not only of his coalition government in Athens but also for securing the survival of his entire country. As for Schulz his new ambition to become President of the Commission has made him susceptible to the ‘needs’ of Brussels and Berlin.

According to the information deliberately ‘leaked’ by Brussels official sources Greece, Cyprus, Malta, Italy, Portugal, Spain, Slovenia and Croatia asked for a strengthening of Frontex, (the European Agency for the Management of Operational Cooperation at the External Borders of the Member States of the European Union). This is the EU service which helps to keep out any aspirant immigrant aiming to land on the EU. Probably France will join today the above mentioned group of countries. In this way migration will become the main item on the 28 leaders table.

Greece, Spain, Portugal, Italy, Slovenia and Croatia are on their knees, with unemployment and widespread poverty, both having attained unheard before dimensions. Still all those countries appear to have sent their leaders to Brussels, to tell their peers that immigration is their major problem. As if keeping some thousands of Africans away from Europe, could offer more jobs to the European unemployed youths.

Then our 28 leaders will start grumbling over the much-advertised taping of Angela Merkel’s cellular phone and probably threaten the Americans with something. No doubt this would help the millions of Europe’s unemployed to go to sleep feeling happy. It’s not a small thing that your leader being ready to ‘demand’ explanations from the Americans! Let alone that they are preparing to build even higher walls, to keep out the hungry millions from Africa, which threaten to steal the job that you don’t have!.

The cooperative

Meanwhile all the mainstream media cooperate in this strategy to diverge the interest of the public opinion, to issues that appear as important, but in reality they mean nothing for the everyday life of the average man and woman in the street, like the alleged taping of Merkel’s phone. As for immigration, all the 28 EU leaders want is to appear as protecting the non-existent job prospects of the millions of Europe’s unemployed. Let alone that some of them may believe that it’s the fault of Africans, that there are no jobs in the EU.

In this way the thorny issues raised by the EESC yesterday in view of the EU Summit didn’t find a place on the table of the 28 EU leaders. “The Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) could fail without a strong social dimension”, warned the EESC ahead of the summit in Brussels. In detail the Committee issued a Press release stressing that “the option of enhanced cooperation should be invoked within the EMU itself. This should be done with its own financial resources, a supplementary Social Fund, a Social Progress Pact and social standards, objectives and stabilizer mechanisms matching the fiscal, budgetary and monetary stabilizer mechanisms”.

Unfortunately all those key policy proposals didn’t find a place on the agenda of the 28 EU leaders.