Starting in 2015 and continuing on through the present day, the European Union has been confronted with a massive influx of migrants. Within these millions of people, there are a variety of groups from refugees fleeing Civil War or to avoid state sponsored persecution as well as people looking for jobs and the proverbial fresh start. This massive uptick in people seeking to reach Europe from Syria, Afghanistan, Libya, and other states in dire straits for the E.U. has caused Europe to struggle with multiple issues including anti-immigrant sentiments, the bureaucracy involved with processing millions of people, and suspicions of terrorism. Few countries have had to bear the stress of trying to care for this influx of people quite as hard as Italy which according to RushHourDaily is processing thousands of new people every week, many of them fleeing from Libya, which after the fall of Colonel Muammar Al-Gaddafi has become an increasingly chaotic and some would say “failed” state.
Italy has been requesting European Union assistance more loudly recently due to a 20 percent uptick in boats trying to cross the Mediterranean Sea from the same timeframe last year. Things have gotten so out of hand that Italy reportedly threatened to close ports last week to humanitarian boats who were not flying the tricolore (the Italian flag) which have the heart-wrenching task of trying to save fleeing migrants from their own shabby watercraft unless its neighbors pitched in more assistance. With that not so idle threat in mind the E.U. opened the checkbook for roughly forty million euros and asked Italy’s neighbors to take some of the people in rescue boats off their hands, notably to Spain and France. However, one part of the problem that does not get addressed by today’s actions is how the E.U. will get non-compliant member states to help alleviate rather than escalate this crisis.
