Europe in a mess

The Eu­ro­pean Union has begun 2022 fac­ing new chal­lenges. If last year was marked by the de­par­ture of the United King­dom, this year be­gins with the de­par­ture of Ger­man Chan­cel­lor An­gela Merkel after 16 un­in­ter­rupted years in power. Her loss will be felt, as the vet­eran Ger­man leader was in­stru­men­tal in help­ing to build and con­sol­i­date the Eu­ro­pean bloc in re­cent years.

With the UK gone and a new, untested chan­cel­lor in Ger­many, could French Pres­i­dent Em­manuel Macron be­come one of Eu­rope’s new lead­ers? In France, he has es­tab­lished him­self as a strong sup­porter of vac­cines, even threat­en­ing to make the lives of those who refuse to get in­oc­u­lated im­pos­si­ble. Yet be­fore Macron can hope to be­come the lead­ing Eu­ro­pean po­lit­i­cal fig­ure over the next few years, he will first have to win April’s pres­i­den­tial elec­tion. France’s con­ser­v­a­tive right, now led by a woman, Valérie Pécresse, threat­ens to over­shadow Macron. A for­mer min­is­ter of Nico­las Sarkozy, Pécresse is a strong can­di­date, al­though the field in­cludes far-right leader Ma­rine Le Pen (who reached the sec­ond round in the last elec­tion), and a new player, Eric Zem­mour, a far-right jour­nal­ist who has burst onto the scene at the head of the anti-im­mi­gra­tion Re­con­quest party.

In­deed, the ar­rival of mi­grants will again be a major chal­lenge fac­ing Eu­rope in com­ing months, with thou­sands knock­ing on the door in states like Poland and Lithua­nia, which have be­come im­mersed in a mi­gra­tion cri­sis caused by the mass ar­rival of peo­ple from Be­larus, as part of its pres­i­dent, Alexan­der Lukashenko’s strat­egy to pres­sure the EU. Mi­grant ar­rivals in Eu­rope are back to pre-pan­demic lev­els, with the Mediter­ranean once again the main focus. Some 200,000 mi­grants and refugees ar­rived in EU coun­tries in 2021, says the EU’s Fron­tex bor­der agency, which also iden­ti­fies the cen­tral Mediter­ranean area as again being the busiest route into Eu­rope.

One of Eu­rope’s most wor­ry­ing con­flicts is the seven-year-old war be­tween Ukraine and Rus­sia, which has in­ten­si­fied in re­cent months due to the build-up of over 100,000 Russ­ian sol­diers near the Ukrain­ian bor­der. The sup­port of US Pres­i­dent Joe Biden for Ukraine has done lit­tle more than strain re­la­tions be­tween Wash­ing­ton and Moscow. The US is a staunch ally of Ukraine and has warned Russ­ian Pres­i­dent Vladimir Putin that it will not allow an in­va­sion of Ukrain­ian ter­ri­tory. Now the UK has left the EU, Ukraine is keen to join the bloc, al­though given the cur­rent cri­sis, it is some­thing that is un­likely to hap­pen this year.

fea­ture eu­ro­pean union