Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/567101
maltatoday, SUNDAY, 6 SEPTEMBER 2015 24 I have no idea if French Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve was consciously quoting Gandalf the Grey when he said last June (of some 6,000 refugees who had crossed the border from Italy): "THEY MUST NOT PASS!" On the remote off-chance that there may be one (maximum two) readers out there who didn't watch Peter Jackson's film adaptation of 'The Lord of the Rings': that line echoes one of its most memorable scenes, in which Gandalf (a wizard) confronts the Balrog (a 'demon from the ancient world') on a narrow stone bridge above a bottomless abyss. I'll keep the description brief; you can always watch the full scene on YouTube. Suffice it to say that Gandalf does successfully stop the Balrog's advance, by breaking the bridge with his staff with the cry: 'You… shall not… PASS!" (thus giving birth to an enduring Internet meme at the same instant). But we all know what happens next: as it plunges down into the darkness below, the falling demon somehow manages to take the wizard down with it. And as far as the rest of the cast is concerned at the time… that was the end of both wizard and demon, in one spectacular CGI conflagration. Allright, enough of fantasy and onto reality: which is beginning to resemble a work of implausible fiction for more than just the occasional one-liner. There is, of course, a limit to how far you can hammer an analogy into place. In fiction, 'wizards' and 'demons' can be comfortably categorised into neat little labels called 'good' and 'evil'. No such classification can be applied to reality: especially a reality categorised by millions of people displaced by war and misery, and thousands dying unthinkable deaths on Europe's doorstep. What unites both scenarios, however, is an inherent sense of self defeat. The wizard's actions are unwittingly self-defeating (at least, in their immediate effect) – in destroying his adversary, he also 'destroys' himself. The same is true of Cazeneuve's actions in France; which are incidentally representative of a broader tendency among governments across the rest of Europe. The only difference is that this example of 'self-destruction' is not as spectacular as in the movies. It is more like the gradual opening of multiple cracks in the structure… cracks that, in time, will bring down not just the bridge, but the entire mountain range as well. But self-destruction it remains. Europe is slowly destroying itself in its attempts to halt the inevitable with a flash of its magic staff. And I mean literally destroying itself: in the above case, it was France versus Italy; and in a parallel case on the other side of the same national borders, it is Britain versus France… where thousands of asylum seekers now choke Calais in a doomed attempt to cross the channel. In refusing to take on more asylum seekers from their neighbours, both these European countries (Britain from France, France from Italy) are effectively perpetuating a vicious cycle whereby individual European countries are invariably left to fend for themselves: even when dealing with an issue that ultimately affects the Union as a whole. I believe the French expression for this attitude is 'votre salade': anything that takes place across the border is 'your problem, not mine'. Until, of course, the same problem surfaces on your own territory, whereupon the solidarity you denied to others is likewise withheld from you. Then across the next border, then the one after that, etc. Judging by German Chancellor Angela Merkel's latest outburst, all of Europe is currently at loggerheads with itself in exactly the same way. The EU recently formulated a plan to 'share out' refugees according to an agreed 'quota'; but as Merkel later pointed out, only five out of 28 member states actually complied. Likewise, the European Commission recently launched a 'common plan of action' to address the growing horror of thousands of people dying in the attempt to reach its shores. At least, that's what it claimed; on scrutiny, the declared aim of this plan was actually to 'strengthen Europe's borders'… with 'saving lives' thrown in only as an additional, bonus objective. But the EU proved fractured and disjointed even when pursuing this limited, inward-looking aim. Member states withheld assets and resources; mutual resentment between European countries deepened; and naturally, the number of corpses floating around in the Mediterranean also increased. Even today, with three-year old toddlers washing up on its beaches, the European Union seems spectacularly incapable of acting in any 'unified' way. And this incapacity for action manifests itself at all levels. Where European countries enthusiastically supported the overthrow of Libya's Gaddafi in 2011 – supplying weapons and assistance to the same militias that would later plunge the country into chaos – there was no analogous intervention of any kind in the Syrian civil war. And while there is plenty of talk of the 'need to involve countries of origin' – that's a direct quote by Joseph Muscat, by the way – well, how does one 'involve' a country Republic Street, Valletta next to the Courts Opinion Raphael Vassallo This crisis will destroy Europe…