EU Leaders Lack Common Policy on Key Issues – EU Chief Brexit Negotiator

© REUTERS / Jonathan ErnstGerman Chancellor Angela Merkel (L) speaks beside NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg and NATO members leaders at the start of the NATO summit at their new headquarters in Brussels, Belgium
German Chancellor Angela Merkel (L) speaks beside NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg and NATO members leaders at the start of the NATO summit at their new headquarters in Brussels, Belgium - Sputnik International
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The leaders of the European Union are unable to achieve common ground on crucial international issues and fail to project a policy for the united bloc, the European Parliament’s chief Brexit negotiator Guy Verhofstadt said Thursday.

MOSCOW (Sputnik) — Verhofstadt, who is also a former Belgian Prime Minister, stressed that the bloc failed to ensure stability in the European region.

“European politicians have mastered the art of wagging their finger, most recently at Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Russian President Vladimir Putin, and US President Donald Trump. Sadly, the same cannot be said for our ability to formulate political solutions and implement common policies,” Verhofstadt wrote in article, published by the Euronews media outlet.

U.S. President Donald Trump (R) walks with the President of the European Council Donald Tusk in Brussels, Belgium, May 25, 2017. - Sputnik International
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“The refugee crisis has shaken Europe to its core, because, rather than taking collective responsibility for managing the flood of migrants and refugees into Europe, we have mostly shifted the burden to frontline countries. This has eroded European solidarity,” Verhofstadt underlined.

The European Union has been struggling to manage a massive refugee crisis which escalated in 2015 with hundreds of thousands of people from the Middle East and North Africa seeking asylum in EU member states. The bloc established a mandatory scheme to relocate the refugees from Greece and Italy throughout the bloc with a specific quota for each member-country. However Hungary and Poland refused to accept refugees and faced criticism from the EU Commission, which threatened to launch infringement procedures against Budapest and Warsaw.

The political stability of the bloc was also undermined by the United Kingdom’s withdrawal from the union, which was officially launched in late March.

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