Russian intelligence is detectable in the huge migration wave hitting Europe. What does this mean for Western security?
None can now deny that the refugee crisis that descended on Europe over the last year has changed the continent’s political landscape. The arrival of millions of migrants, mainly from the Middle East and Africa, with the encouragement of some European leaders, has birthed a political earthquake that promises to reshape Europe’s politics in important ways.
Even Europeans who initially supported the efforts of Angela Merkel, Germany’s chancellor and the most powerful politician in the European Union, to welcome millions of refugees have begun to express public doubts about this enterprise. This week, Austria’s foreign minister, whose country only months ago was welcoming tens of thousands of migrants, expressed Vienna’s position concisely: “The concept of no borders is not going to work.”
This statement has profound implications for an EU that has already begun to recreate national border checks, which disappeared in most of the European Union with the birth of the Schengen Area two decades ago. In order to stem the burgeoning migrant tide, border security is reemerging inside the EU. The prospect of millions more migrants attempting to enter the EU through the Balkans this spring fills politicians and security officials all over Europe with dread.
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