Immigration: a resource for a Europe united in diversity

This paper scrutinises the current phenomenon of the refugees’ crisis, which is spreading all over Europe and it identifies several standpoints to look, at and to think about, this tragic issue. The paper focuses on the behaviour and attitudes shown by several Countries during the last few weeks, continuously changing the geopolitical orders of the EU, with particularreference to new emerging dynamics in the nearly annexed East and in a “guiltily” forgotten Mediterranean South. Starting from, and continuously referring to, President Juncker’s lastspeech on the “State of the Union”, the article shares and proposes the need to face and manage the issue of the refugees’ crisis with a political approach that is considered as the key to cope with this crisis. The paper assumes that this is a typical momentum for the European Union: depending on its ability to act as internally united, the EU will demonstrate its capacity or incapacity to continue to effectively build the actual and deep Union. In other words, Europe is now facing a double crisis: the refugees’ crisis and its internal unity crisis. Finally, the author proposes to focus on the Mediterranean, which should recover its centrality in the policies of Europe.