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.
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.