Cultural differences mean migration could 'dissolve EU', says top diplomat

Migration could be "a dissolving force for the European Union" because of deep cultural differences between countries and their long-term inability to reach a common policy, Josep Borrell, the EU's most senior diplomat, has said.

- Patrick Wintour

Although Russia will try to fan the flames on migration inside Europe, Borrell denied that the war in Ukraine itself was contributing to the crisis, which he described as a decades-old problem fuelled by wars and poverty in the countries migrants had left.

The EU's external affairs commissioner said the EU was one of the key forces forging a new world order in which the global south deserved greater respect and power.

In a wide-ranging interview with the Guardian, he said the Ukraine war had forced European countries to wake from a siesta on defence spending, in which they had lived under the American nuclear umbrella.

He called for greater defence cooperation and quicker decisions on the supply of weapons to Ukraine and defended the faltering counteroffensive, saying the country was one-third mined and it would have been suicidal for Ukraine to have mounted a full frontal counter-attack.

At a subsequent lecture at the New York University law school, he said the UN security council had been proved "completely useless due to its divisions" and called for reform of political and financial institutions to revive a multilateralism that "is outdated and running out of steam".

This week, Italy's far-right prime minister, Giorgia Meloni, said she would not allow her country to become "Europe's refugee camp" after 11,000 people arrived on the island of Lampedusa in a week.