President of the EU Commission Jean-Claude Juncker speaks during a news conference in Tallinn, Estonia, June 30, 2017. (REUTERS/Ints Kalnins)
Go ahead, European Union. Keep throwing your weight around at the expense of your 28 member countries. Make them do things they don’t want to do, impose penalties on any who challenge you, and call Brexit an anomaly. On Wednesday, the president of the European Commission will do just that and more.
Jean-Claude Juncker’s annual State of the Union speech has three main themes: that the massive influx of refugees from the Middle East and Africa poses no threat to Europe’s security overall, that the shock of Great Britain’s vote last year to leave the EU was a one-time aberrant event, and that what the EU leadership really needs is tighter control over its members, not more freedom to make their own choices.
“It is a belief that verges on the religious on the creation of their project,” says Nigel Farage, a member of the European parliament and a Fox News contributor.
“We now have a European parliament that is more interested in its own survival than that of its members. They think that Brexit and Donald Trump were just short-term shocks that are now over, because Emmanuel Macron won in France.”
“We now have a European parliament that is more interested in its own survival than that of its members. They think that Brexit and Donald Trump were just short-term shocks that are now over, because Emmanuel Macron won in France.”
The latest episode of Eur-overreach is a ruling by the EU’s high court that Hungary, a member state, must accept a Euro-imposed quota of migrants from the Middle East and Africa. Hungary’s Prime Minister, Viktor Orban, has maintained a hard-line policy of not allowing such immigrants into his country, and quarantining any who make it past the border. Orban calls immigration a “poison” that threatens European culture and likens Muslim migrants in particular to a “Trojan horse for terrorism.”
His approval rating, once a robust 80 percent, has been cut in half in the past year, since he tried to regulate a university funded by Hungarian-born socialist billionaire George Soros. But his stance on keeping immigrants out is still supported by most Hungarians.
The power of the Brussels-based EU is its ability to force states to do what it tells them. Letting Hungary resist its orders could set off a spate of independent thinking – the last thing a deeply unpopular, self-created bureaucracy like the EU can tolerate.
Orban means to do just that. “It doesn’t matter what they might threaten Viktor with,” says Farage. “He will not bend.”
Sounds like a tough-talking populist candidate who bucked the political system in the United States last year. Whatever became of him?
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