Italy Takes the Next Step Towards EU Dissolution

The latest on the EU migrant crisis is that Italy is ready to issue 200,000 refugees temporary travel visas to relocate as their want across the EU. This is the nuclear option for dealing with this situation and it is straining not only the budget of the European Union but also the patience of many of the member nations.

This is a direct slap in the face to Austria, who posted armed guards on their border, and the rest of eastern Europe who have been steadfastly opposed to German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s unilateral move to import millions from places destabilized by her own policy.

Zerohedge has some more details:

Mattia Toaldo, a senior analyst at the European Council on Foreign Relations, told The Times: “If migrants continue to arrive and Italy decides to give them papers to cross borders and leave Italy it would be a nuclear option.”

And since “Italians have lost any hope of getting help from the EU” they may say, “If you won’t make it a common challenge, we will” Toaldo added.

This is precisely what some in Gentiloni’s government are already doing: Mario Giro, Italy’s deputy foreign minister, and Luigi Manconi, a senator with the ruling Democratic Party, told The Times that issuing migrants with temporary visas was under discussion. Giro believes that Italy can exploit European Council Directive 2001/55, developed after the Balkans conflict to give temporary European entry permits to a large number of displaced people.

Needless to say, if Italy pursues this course of action, and ultimately activates the “nuclear option”, support for the Schengen scheme, which allows all EU citizens to travel freely across the Continent, may be in jeopardy. Worse, since for most of the migrants the final destination will be Germany, it may rekindle the same migrant crisis which at the end of 2015 saw Angela Merkel’s approval rating plummet as her countrymen slammed her “Open Door” (since shut) policy. (emphasis mine)

Merkel has been enjoying a renaissance in the polls as both her opposition is incompetent — Martin Schultz? Really? — and she has slowed the flow of migrants into Germany, making the Visigrad 4 — Hungary, Poland, Slovakia and The Czech Republic — into the bad guys for not taking their quota.

They won’t do so because they never signed off on the policy in the first place. And this whole migrant crisis has highlighted in stark relief just how autocratic and despotic the EU has become. Many of the member nations are now realizing just how undemocratic the EU’s structure is.

The European Parliament is a toothless body that does not make legislation. When the European Commission, headed by Jean-Claude Juncker who walks in lock-step with Merkel, decides something the whole of the EU has to go along with it.

Italian Prime Minister Paolo Gentolini’s government, not what anyone would call radical or euroskeptic, is now bearing the burden of a policy gone mad. As George Soros continues to fund boat after boat dropping these people off on Italy’s shores with nowhere for them to go.

All the virtue signaling in the world cannot overcome the reality that the EU is broke, it’s bond and currency markets broken. They exist at the limit of expansion via debt and now with government promises to its actual citizens in serious trouble, these pathological ideologues are going out of their way to play autocratic power politics with the lives of millions of people for their grand schemes of social engineering which are falling apart before our eyes.

While this isn’t a signal that Italy is going to invoke Italeave or anything. It will continue to fracture what is rapidly becoming a loose coalition of countries being torn apart by economic imperatives and political realities.

And to top off the lunacy of it all, what the top headline I get from a Bing search of ‘italy refugees?”