Will Migrant Crisis Kill EU? - With Guest Nigel Farage
Europe's disastrous migrant policy may be its undoing, says UKIP leader Nigel Farage. Irresponsible interventions in Iraq and Libya have produced instability that leads to the crisis, then the EU offers an open door to migrants. Is it any wonder they are streaming in? Meanwhile Hungary is being demonized for hesitating to take in tens of thousands of economic migrants. Also, a coming UK referendum on EU membership could be the final nail in the corrupt EU coffin.
Europe's disastrous migrant policy may be its undoing, says UKIP leader Nigel Farage. Irresponsible interventions in Iraq and Libya have produced instability that leads to the crisis, then the EU offers an open door to migrants. Is it any wonder they are streaming in? Meanwhile Hungary is being demonized for hesitating to take in tens of thousands of economic migrants. Also, a coming UK referendum on EU membership could be the final nail in the corrupt EU coffin.
Europe's disastrous migrant policy may be its undoing, says UKIP leader Nigel Farage. Irresponsible interventions in Iraq and Libya have produced instability that leads to the crisis, then the EU offers an open door to migrants. Is it any wonder they are streaming in? Meanwhile Hungary is being demonized for hesitating to take in tens of thousands of economic migrants. Also, a coming UK referendum on EU membership could be the final nail in the corrupt EU coffin.
Hello everybody and thank you for tuning in to the Liberty Report.
Today with me is the co-host Daniel Mick Adams who is also the Executive Director of the Institute for Peace and Prosperity.
Daniel, nice to have you with us today.
Good morning Dr. Paul.
We have a very special guest Skyping in from Brussels and somebody I've met and known and is a friend of Liberty and we're going to be talking about a very important issue dealing with the migrants in Europe.
That individual is the leader of the UK Independent Party as well as a member of the European Parliament.
Nigel Farage.
Nigel, welcome to the program today.
Thank you very much indeed.
I'm very, very pleased to be here.
Good.
Very nice to see you.
I want to start off with asking you a very general question before we get into some of your ideas on how you can improve things with this crisis that's engulfing Europe.
And that is, how did it come about at this particular time?
Where do you see the source of the problems that all of a sudden this is a major problem?
Nobody six months ago predicted this.
Maybe you did, but nobody in the States really paid any attention to it.
How do you see this crisis having evolved?
Well, I think if we're brutally honest, we have to say to ourselves that the Iraq war, which was fought to get rid of Saddam Hussein, led to destabilization in the region.
I think we have to be honest and say that Libya in 2011, where we went in to get rid of Gaddafi without any thought or long-term plan or strategy at all.
So let's be frank, Britain, America have not helped this situation.
And I think it's an honest way to look at this.
Now, why are people coming in the numbers that they are?
Well, they're coming because they know that Europe won't refuse anybody.
And so if you say to people, if you come, you'll be taken in.
It's no great surprise when they do come.
I have to say that there is a long-term moral argument for granting people who are genuine refugees or trying to help people who are genuine refugees.
The problem with what is happening now is, yes, people are coming from countries that are war-torn.
Yes, people are coming from countries that are very much poorer than most of the northern European countries.
But, you know, that's not the same thing.
If over 80% of people that come are actually economic migrants, then I think we have a massive, massive problem.
I think Europe have got this policy wrong.
I said six months ago that if you send out this message that anybody that comes and puts one foot on European soil can stay, I said it would lead to an exodus of biblical proportions, and that I think is now what we're seeing.
Mr. Farage, Daniel here, I just want to say, having this opportunity, I remember your 2011 advice to Victor Orban about communists in the European Commission.
I think will go down as one of the great moments in political history.
I watch that over and over because I think it's fantastic.
But further on, Hungary, you know, Hungary and Orban particularly have been demonized in the European media and in the U.S. media for their handling of the crisis, for essentially following the Dublin regulations, whereas Berlin and Vienna have been praised for ignoring the Dublin regulations, and then all of a sudden the floodgates opened and all heck broke loose.
Do you think that Orban and Hungary have gotten kind of a raw deal in how they've been treated by Brussels especially, but also by the media?
Well, it's an object lesson, isn't it?
I mean, Victor Orban is a strong man.
He's running a country where the old communists still have their little niches of power.
And Orban is trying to clear all of that out and trying to make Hungary into a modern democracy.
He is a proper leader.
He's a man that I have some admiration for, I have to say.
As you say, he's the one that's actually obeyed all the rules.
And what on earth is wrong with building a fence?
What on earth is wrong with protecting and defending your own borders?
Nothing.
But what's happened to Orban is really an object lesson in why democracy has effectively been expunged in this European project.
So Victor Orban, the Romanians, Slovakians, some of those Central and Eastern European countries, when they were asked by Mrs. Merkel and the European Commission to share out for settlement numbers of people who'd come in, they said no.
And you would have thought that would have been the end of that.
And yet by using quite a crude device, the European Commission and the European Parliament passed a piece of legislation that then went back to 28 prime ministers and presidents, but then could be passed by using a majority vote, as opposed to a country having its own right of veto.
And so now they're duty bound to take numbers from Brussels.
I don't know.
I mean, we've seen disunity in Europe over the Euro, where one currency suiting economies as diverse as Germany and Greece has shown just not to work.
But I sense that the level of division that exists now within this European project over the migrant crisis is even more serious.
Because, you know, it wasn't just the European Commission saying, you know, oh, come all ye faithful.
Migration's Economic Impact00:03:26
Anyone that wants to come can.
It was, of course, the German Chancellor.
It was Angela Merkel who said, oh, we'll take 800,000 people.
That's no problem.
And that led to a stampede.
So, you know, I am speaking to you from the European Parliament, but believe me, these institutions here in Brussels are stuck in a very, very real crisis.
And unless we change policy, unless we say, look, we'll take genuine refugees, but we won't take them if they come across the Mediterranean by boat.
We won't take them if they play into the hands of the criminal traffickers.
And I mean, you know, on a human level, let's just remember that 3,000 people have drowned this year in the Mediterranean.
But there is a modern-day precedent for all of this because Australia had exactly the same situation.
It started back in 2008 with boatloads of people coming from Southeast Asia.
And the Australians said, if you come by this method, you will not be accepted.
The boats stop coming, the people stop coming, and the drowning stopped happening.
You know, that more or less makes the point.
If you subsidize something, you get more of it.
So if you subsidize migrants, you're going to get more.
But, you know, you mentioned that economic policy has something to do with it.
There are economic migrants coming in for economic reasons as well as it being related to the wars that have been going on.
But I want to get your opinion more specifically about the longer-term consequence of what's going to happen to the European Union as well as to the Euro.
You know, Europe has not recovered.
We really in the United States have not recovered from the crisis of 08.
And so I see the world economies as very shaky.
And can you give me an idea on how serious you think this is, even if you can't solve the migrant policy, or especially if you can, what's this going to do to the economy and to Europe?
Because, you know, it is a world economy and this is something that none of us could ignore.
Well, I mean, there is one argument that says that if you have huge amounts of unskilled labor coming into European countries and that people want to work, that there is a benefit for big businesses because they keep wage price inflation down and that's one potential economic benefit of mass migration.
But against that, what you have to understand is that there are workers in Britain and in France and in Germany who are displaced by huge amounts of foreign labor and that average salaries are kept penned to the floor, pinned down to the floor, because of that excess labor in the market.
And you could argue there's an economic benefit, but I would argue even if there is an economic benefit, not everything is just about money.
There is something called community.
There is something called country.
There is something called looking after your own people.
Now, on the big macroeconomics, I mean, I'm very struck that if we look at all the factors that led to the crash of 08, basically indebtedness and a credit squeeze, levels of national debt, levels of commercial debt, and levels of personal debt are now higher than they were when this crisis broke back in 2008.
Tough Economic Times Ahead00:03:56
And I have to be honest, I am pretty bearish.
I am pretty pessimistic.
I think the flatlining of commodity prices is giving us a very, very good hint, a very good indication that there are some tough economic times to come.
Now, what that means for the Eurozone is that that disparity, and it's not just a disparity of wealth, it's a disparity of culture between Greece and Germany.
So we've now had three bailouts of the Greeks, and if we get this economic downturn, there'll be a fourth.
So the Euro is not working.
But there may be an event, there may be a huge event that perhaps could change all of this, and that is that we in the United Kingdom will have a referendum on whether we stay members of this political project or not.
And if Britain, in this referendum, which is likely to take place sometime next year, latest by the end of 2017, if Britain was to vote to leave the European Union, well, you could see the whole structure here start to crumble.
What is your estimate on what the European Union will be like in 10 years from now?
Is there a chance or a possibility that the European Union will break up, or do you think it's there to stay for a long time?
Well, there's been a huge amount invested in making this European Union work.
You know, almost the entire political elite in Europe have backed this supranational project, have been happy to get rid of their own nation-state democracies and hand power.
And here's the remarkable thing, to hand power, real power, to people you can't vote for and people you can't remove.
They're called commissioners.
So they've invested a lot in this.
However, I think the seeds of dissent are now very strong.
You know, you take my party in Britain as being one example of that, but they're everywhere now.
They're right across the north, south, east, and west of this continent of Europe.
I find it impossible to believe that we can go on through 10 more years of policy failure, 10 more years, frankly, where growth prospects are simply dismal.
No, this thing is going to break apart.
I don't know when it's going to break apart, but I'm going to do my damnedest for us to win that British referendum to begin the process of this breaking apart.
And I say that, not because I'm destructive.
I say that because I believe there is such a thing as nations and people and wanting to have their own democracies, wanting to be the masters of their own destiny.
And I want a Europe where nation states trade together, cooperate together, are friends and neighbours with each other, but not a Europe where nation states hand power to this supranational project.
And I feel more optimistic than at any point in the 20 years I've been campaigning on this.
I feel more optimistic that we are really, really close to breaking this.
You know, most people in the United States don't have a good feel for the European Union and the Euro and how their government works.
And some wonder about, you know, where do they get the money?
Does the European Union and the European Parliament have taxing authority?
Is this a problem or is each individual country have to prorate and send money to the European Union?
How does that work?
Yeah, it works through a membership fee.
Member states pay a membership fee and then some money comes back generally in terms of agricultural protection or whatever it may be.
Britain is a big neck, you know, a big neck contributor to it.
So membership fees are one of the ways they raise money.
The other way they raise money is through something called a common external tariff.
And that means the more business a country does with non-EU countries, the more money it has to pay in through this common external tariff.
Membership Fees & Tariffs00:01:41
What they don't yet have here are direct tax raising powers, although it's something they'd very much like to have.
I mean, don't forget, they've got a flag, they've got an anthem, they're talking about their own army.
I mean, you know, they are building a state, and yet nobody in Europe has ever given their consent to it.
So, you know, the budgets here, the budgets they have here are not massive compared to the budgets that nations have.
But the power that these people have here is huge.
And just to give you a sort of illustration of that, I mean, something like 75% of all laws that are made in Britain each year are not made in Westminster, are not made in the British Parliament.
They come through these institutions.
Nigel, time is short, so we're going to have to leave here within a minute or two.
But I want to thank you very much for joining us today and talking about this very important issue.
And hopefully we can follow up someday on this.
And we all wish you well on your referendum, because that would be very interesting, because the referendum is the way to go.
And we were very observant of the referendum just recently in Catalonia.
But anyway, thank you very much for being with us today.
Thank you very much.
And watch this space.
Things are changing in Europe.
They're changing fast.
And I genuinely believe it is now 50-50 in this referendum, whether Britain leaves the European Union or stays.
And if we leave, that pro-democracy, that pro-nation state message will be a huge one.
Thank you.
Well, thank you.
And I want to thank the audience today for tuning in to the Liberty Report.