TODAY IS EUROPE DAY !!!

Today is Europe Day,  the European Union’s annual celebration of peace and unity on the Continent. The holiday commemorates a 1950 speech by Robert Schuman, the French foreign minister at the time, that set out the case for a European Coal and Steel Community. This was the core of what became the European Union. Though most of the Continent is mercifully free of war, an accomplishment for which the European Union won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2012, it is facing more challenges than ever.

1. Britain Might Leave

British voters will decide on June 23 whether to leave the 28-nation European Union. Driven by fears over immigration, dissatisfaction with the bureaucracy in Brussels and anxiety over Britain’s evolving place in the world, the campaign to leave says that Britain will be stronger outside the European Union, although most experts say the economy would take a hit, at least in the short term.

2. Migration Has Created Political Havoc

More than one million people desperate and fleeing war and persecution entered the Continent last year, testing the European Union’s bonds. A majority ended up in Germany, where Chancellor Angela Merkel, defying domestic and international critics, insisted on keeping the door open to asylum seekers. Under a deal with Turkey reached in March, asylum seekers using clandestine routes to reach Greece from Turkey are being sent back, while the European Union will directly resettle refugees, mostly Syrians, who have been processed and registered in Turkey. Many observers say the crisis will not really abate without a political or other resolution to end the Syrian civil war, which is now more than five years old.

3. Far-Right Parties Are on the Rise

Dissatisfaction with the European Union is nothing new, but a combination of factors — anxieties over Islamic extremism, fears of terrorism and economic stagnation — have fueled right-wing parties across Europe.

• Marine Le Pen’s National Front made big gains in the first round of regional elections in France in December,
• In Germany, the migration crisis has fueled the rise of the far-right Alternative for Germany
• Last week, the once marginal U.K. Independence Party, , which supports a British exit from the union, won seats in the Welsh Assembly and in the London Assembly.
• The Fidesz party of Viktor Orban, elected prime minister of Hungary in 2010, and the Law and Justice party, which swept to power in Poland in October, have alarmed human rights and civil liberties groups by limiting news media freedoms, reining in the judiciary and lashing out at dissidents.

4. Growth Remains Sluggish

Years after the financial crisis of 2008-9, Europe’s economy is only fitfully recovering.

• The International Monetary Fund projects that the euro area will grow by a lethargic 1.7 percent this year, compared with 4.3 percent in emerging and developing economies, 2.6 percent in the United States and 2.2 percent in Britain.
• Aging populations, stagnant productivity and rising inequality in Europe are fueling discontent. From 2008 to 2014, Greek households lost 24 percent of their disposable income, while German households gained more than 15 percent.
• Youth unemployment in Italy, Germany and Spain is high. In France, even a modest attempt to loosen the country’s rigid employee protections has been met with stiff protests.

Happy Europe Day!!!