Terror threatens Cameron’s EU pitch, Merkel’s open door

If David Cameron and Angela Merkel thought they had earned a moment’s respite from their woes, the murderous attacks in Brussels only deepened their political turmoil.
The bombings at the heart of the European Union that killed at least 34 people were seized upon by proponents of Britain leaving the bloc to argue that EU membership puts the U.K. more at risk, rather than making it safer as the prime minister asserts. In Germany, an insurgent party that benefited from opposition to Chancellor Merkel’s open-door policy on refugees immediately warned of the threat of “political Islam.”
The Brussels attacks may increase xenophobic and anti-immigration sentiment across the EU, which has already been rising in light of the refugee crisis, said Mujtaba Rahman, director of European analysis at the Eurasia Group in London. That has implications both for the survival of the passport-free Schengen area championed by Merkel and the outcome of the U.K.’s in-out referendum on the EU in June, he said.
The blasts are a “nail in Schengen’s coffin,” and create the perception among the public that EU leaders are “not in control,” Rahman said in a Bloomberg Radio interview. Outside the Schengen zone in Britain, “Cameron has argued that the U.K. will be safer in the EU, but these events will make that narrative harder to sell.”
The Sun newspaper picked up the baton yesterday, referring to comments Cameron made in an interview that Europe helps make Britain safer. “How hollow that sounds today after the atrocities in the heart of Brussels,” it said in a op-ed. MDT/Bloomberg