Europe’s wicked legitimacy crisis: the case of refugees

Abstract

The European Union’s response to the current and persistent – if not wicked – refugee crisis has exposed a new legitimacy challenge. Characterised by interstate bickering and undignified competition for the most draconian measures, the crisis brings to the fore many inherent tensions of the EU which cannot be easily reconciled. The crisis has revealed the many shortcomings of EU governance. Deficits of leadership and solidarity and the rise of xenophobic politics across many member states exploit growing populism with pronounced effect. This multi-dimensional problem, so resistant to a distinct solution, underscores the EU’s instability in a number of ways: its foundational values have lost resonance; its institutional inadequacies have become more apparent; its leadership and agenda-setting power have been noticeably weakened. Ultimately, the EU is no longer perceived as a problem-solver, a fact that inherently tests the legitimacy of a system that was created to solve problems.

Keywords:

• European Union
• legitimacy
• wicked problems
• asylum policy
• leadership
• refugees

Acknowledgements

The authors wish to thank the anonymous referees for their very helpful reviews.

Notes

1. In the preamble of the TEU, in articles 2, 3, 21, 24(2) and (3) of the TEU and articles 67, 80 of the TFEU, there is recourse to the fair sharing of responsibility among member states as well as fairness to third country nationals, and ultimately in article 222, a commitment to acting jointly in the spirit of solidarity should disaster strike.

2. Article I of the German Basic Law 1949 enshrines the inviolability of human dignity as a principle of German constitutional law. Subsequent articles catalogue civil and political rights derived from early United Nations legal instruments, primarily the Universal Declaration of Human Rights 1948.