Last November the Center for German and European Studies hosted a conference entitled “WARS’ END? THE LEGACY OF MIGRATION AND DISPLACEMENT, EUROPE 1918-2018.” The keynote speaker of the event was Wolfgang Muncahu. Linked here is an interview that Munchau participated in while visiting Madison on the NPR show, To the Best of Our Knowledge.
By:
Shannon Henry Kleiber
Wolfgang Munchau is a longtime observer and analyst of the political and economic climate surrounding the morphing of international borders.
Munchau a columnist for The Financial Times, where he writes a column about the European Union and the European economy. Munchau is also founder and co-director of Eurointelligence, an independent online magazine about politics and economics.
The European economy has been greatly affected by rapid immigration changes that have occurred in the past decade.
European nations have seen simultaneous mass migrations across their borders since 2014.
The flow of refugees fleeing war in Syria, which has slowed in part due to Islamic State group territorial losses and an agreement with Turkey to take in more refugees fleeing in exchange for greater foreign aid from the EU. Concurrently, the collapse of Muammar Gaddafi’s rule in Libya in 2014 has triggered mass migration from all over northern Africa to Libya, where refugees trek to Libya’s northern coast, across the Mediterranean Sea toward Italy.
Munchau spoke with host Steve Paulson for “To The Best of Our Knowledge” in November to lay out the realities of mass migration in Europe, particularly when it come to strains on infrastructure and political systems.