Refugee Crisis, Granting UK Special Status Show EU Weakness

The president of Republika Srpska told Sputnik Serbia that the massive crisis caused by the refugee influx and granting the United Kingdom a special status within the European Union both show the bloc's weakness.

MOSCOW (Sputnik) — The massive crisis caused by the refugee influx and granting the United Kingdom a special status within the European Union show how weak the bloc is, Milorad Dodik, the president of Republika Srpska, one of the two administrative entities in Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH), told Sputnik Serbia.

"The BiH application for EU membership has been accepted, but Europe is not what it was 10 years ago… Is the concept of a United Europe, where 500 million people live, so weak that it could be undermined by 1.5 million refugees?" Dodik said.

According to the official, London’s willingness to leave the bloc was indicative of the current state of the European Union.

"In order to avoid the EU breaking up, it is giving the United Kingdom a special status. This means that London will only implement those decisions of Brussels which correspond to the United Kingdom’s interests. What kind of organization, in which this is possible, is this?" Dodik continued.

The European Union is currently struggling to manage a massive refugee crisis, with hundreds of thousands of people fleeing conflict-torn countries in the Middle East and North Africa. The EU border agency Frontex recorded more than 1.8 million illegal border crossings in the bloc in 2015.

The UK public is set to vote on June 23 in a referendum on the country's EU membership, after Prime Minister David Cameron and 27 of his European colleagues secured a deal earlier in February to grant the United Kingdom a special status within the bloc.