How the spectre of Yugoslavia looms over EU’s handling of the refugee crisis

Everyone has forgotten there were almost as many asylum seekers in Europe in the early 1990s as today. In the 1990s they were mainly from the Balkan countries of the former Yugoslavia.

However, what separates the current refugee crisis is not its scale. It is that it has occurred during a perfect storm of other factors: the economic crisis, the rise of anti-immigration parties, and a media increasingly desperate for readers and arguably resorting to ever uglier coverage to keep them.

Look beyond this and the northern European countries have clearly tried to learn from the past. The real question is whether the fix is workable – in particular, the shifting of some of the burden to southern and central European states. It is not at all clear whether they have the capacity to cope with it.

• Primary Source

ESO: Information Guide: European Migration Challenges http://www.europeansources.info/record/information-guide-european-migration-challenges/

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