EU is ‘Bursting at the Seams,’ Needs New Policies to Survive

The European Union (EU) is in a deep crisis and it needs to come up with new mechanisms and principles to overcome current problems, said Anne Blanpain, a political commentator of broadcasting company RTBF.

There needs to be a reconstruction of the existing mechanisms and principles of functioning within the EU, Blanpain said.

"I don't know what kind of other crises the EU needs to face for its leaders to understand that the union is bursting at the seams," Blanpain said during a broadcast to radio station La Premiere.

According to the political expert, the current situation in the EU is critical, as shown by a series of crises over the past few months: the Greek debt crisis, the influx of refugees and a subsequent negative reaction of many EU nations which outright refused to accept them, a petition signed by almost 500,000 Dutch citizens demanding their government to hold a referendum on a free-trade agreement with Ukraine, as well as the result of a Catalan election that opens up a prospect of a unilateral declaration of the region's independence from Spain.

All of these things clearly indicate that the EU needs "a serious cleanup of its functioning and thought-processing" system. Ordinary European citizens often don't understand EU policies, while the leaders of EU members are themselves fed up with the whole system, Blanpain explained.

Others, including Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras, criticized the EU's current policies and mechanisms, calling for the return to initial declarations and principles of solidarity and justice that the EU once had, but since then has long lost.