Tonight is a sad night I reckon. Not only have EU minsters dedicated to suspend too a degree the Schengen agreement due to a refugee problem (so claimed) in Europe. This problem is over inflated by extremist politicians (too the right or left) how want to gain popularity by pointing out issues that are not there to begin with.
While that it is true that refugees that come to Europe have to be dealt with. This is the wrong way to do so and has always been. As it does not solve the issue on how to get refugees properly housed in Europe or integrated into Europe culture if they wish to remain in Europe. All that imposing border controls in Europe does is to punish citizen of EU member states and the Schengen states outside of EU (Iceland, Norway, Switzerland). It is also worth noticing that in size of the population, refugees into Europe is still a small number.
The root of this issue is the growing popularity of right wing extremist in politics and also growing left wing extremism in politics. It is a fact that Europe has a extremely bad lessons from giving into the demands of the extremist, as they are just into it for there own gains. Euro-sceptics should not be listen too, as they long for the old days of war in Europe.
No political party in Europe should take part in what the extreme political parties to the left or right are going for. It is also clear that public in Europe should and needs to refuse the ideas that this extreme political parties offer. As in the long term such direction is only going to hurt the population and is not going to solve the refugee issue. Closing down the border is not going to solve that issue at all. It is only going to make it more complex and harder to deal with in the long term.
Populist politicians are short sighted and generally dumb. But they are generally found on the extreme arm of the political spectrum. They should always be refused any power for any reason at all. When this type of people get into power the results are always and always will be a disaster. As is proven today when moderate political parties try to follow the damaging and dangerous path of extremist political parties, in order to gain popularity with in there own countries.
Schengen agreement and its implementation must not be sacrificed on a short sighted mission to solve a temporary (5 to 10 years) problem that has appeared in Europe (refugees from northern Africa). Doing so is against EU ideas and what Europe has been working for for the past 59 years.
Blog post updated at 03:02 CEST on 13. May 2011. Title of blog post fixed.