European Union member states have no power over their own borders, according to a senior figure of the Brexit campaign.
EU leaders signed a “common future” declaration Saturday as the union celebrated its 60th birthday. Several countries have expressed skepticism over the project’s status and leaders have urged unity as the United Kingdom gets ready to leave.
Daniel Hannan, a British member of the European Parliament from the Conservative Party, thinks the EU has failed to create the “shared culture” necessary to run a functioning democracy. Free movement and the Eurozone were meant to bring security and prosperity to the EU, but both “turned out to be fair weather promises,” according to Hannan.
“Overseeing the economy and securing the national territory are primal functions of any government, but both on monetary policy and immigration, European member states found themselves powerless,” Hannan told The Daily Caller News Foundation. “Now, that wouldn’t matter if people came together as ‘Europeans.’”
The EU commissioner for migration, Dimitris Avramopoulos, recently warned that the EU has the “tools, the means and the power” to convince all members to relocate refugees whether they want to or not.
The relocation plan is meant to ease pressure on countries that have been flooded with migrants over the past two years, primarily Greece and Italy. Few migrants have successfully been relocated under the program and the EU will make an assessment of response by the end of September.
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