It’s their fault and it’s not our problem. Besides, as both Napoleon and Hitler learned the hard way, invaders freezing to death during winter is a feature, not a bug.
Migrants crossing the Balkans will begin freezing to death as winter approaches, the head of European Union has said, as leaders warned the continent was “falling apart” trying to deal with the biggest humanitarian crisis since the Second World War.
As leaders of eastern European countries turned on each other at a foul-tempered emergency summit in Brussels, they said the Schengen visa-free zone and even the European Union itself could be pulled apart as states threw up borders to halt the influx.
Jean-Claude Juncker, the president of the European Commission, said a solution was urgently needed or thousands of refugee families facing winter temperature on the hillsides and freezing river-banks of Eastern Europe, would die.
“Every day counts,” he said. “Otherwise we will soon see families in cold rivers in the Balkans perish miserably.”
Miro Cerar, the Slovenian prime minister, said the EU was days from collapse as his country buckled under an “unbearable” influx of migrants. “If we do not deliver some immediate and concrete actions on the ground in the next few days and weeks I believe the EU and Europe as a whole will start falling apart,” he said.
Werner Faymann, the Austrian chancellor, said Sunday’s meeting would “either consolidate the unity of Europe or watch the slow decomposition of the EU.”
First of all, the continent of Europe is not going to fall apart no matter what happens. Second, the EU has already started falling apart, as the various walls going up and Euroskeptic parties winning elections in former EU candidates like Poland demonstrates. Third, what “unity of Europe”? Faymann might as have reasonably appealed to consolidating the unicorn of Europe. The EU is already mortally wounded, it just hasn’t stopped thrashing about yet.
If the EU leaders genuinely care about the poor families in cold rivers” (which they absolutely don’t), there is a very simple and straightforward solution that is certain to save thousands of lives. Start sending immigrants back to their homelands and show it on television. Repeatedly. Incessantly. Once people see that the entire arduous ordeal is guaranteed to be for nothing, they will turn back. Or not begin the long march in the first place.
The EU leaders clearly don’t understand that most Europeans will be as happy to see the invaders fall to General Winter as the Russian people were to see the French, and later the Germans, do the same. They’re about to learn what the US leaders learned after Sandy Hook: the sob stories are not fooling anyone any longer.
With 3,175 migrant deaths in 2015 vs 125 total Berlin Wall deaths, Angela Merkel has killed more people than any German leader since Hitler.