The EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, Josep Borrell, has said that the refugee crisis caused by the war in Ukraine, will dwarf the 2015/2016 crisis which saw refugees flooding into Europe from Syria.
Speaking after European foreign ministers met in France to discuss the crisis, Borrell said:
“When it was the Syria crisis in 2015 to 16, we were talking about one and a half million people. Now it’s going to be much more. We must mobilise all the resources of the EU to help those countries receiving people, all the countries bordering Ukraine.
We will need more schools, more reception centres, more of everything. We very much fear there will be five million refugees in Europe. This is a reasonable estimate and unprecedented since the Second World War.”
According to The Times:
The EU, UN and Red Cross expect the flow of refugees to intensify as the Russian army advances deeper into Ukraine, particularly as it approaches Kyiv.
The EU has estimated that “18 million people will be hit by the conflict in Ukraine” out of a population of 41 million, driving a humanitarian disaster with a need for food and water supplies, shelter and other basic needs.
The United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR) said the number of refugees hit 1,735,068 yesterday, up by more than 200,000 since Sunday as people were displaced by the war.
More than a million people have arrived in Poland, with more than 180,000 in Hungary and 128,000 in Slovakia, which are also neighbours.
The Irish government has offered to take in 100,000 Ukrainian refugees. That’s equivalent to a city the size of Limerick. Ireland, like most countries, has seen public services decimated because of Covid lockdowns.
The unemployment rate in the country, adjusted to take Covid into account, is around 8 per cent, but it’s expected to rise further still in the next couple of years.
The rate of home ownership in Ireland has plummeted in recent decades too. Ireland’s local authorities are not building nearly enough homes to rent to low-income families. Competition for social housing is fierce, to put it mildly.
There are more than 900,000 Irish men and women waiting for hospital treatment that was postponed as the Irish Health Service became a Covid health service.
It’s a perfect storm. Ireland needs an influx of 100,000 refugees like a fish needs a bicycle. Of course, to talk about these things is to invite accusations of xenophobia. One might also be accused of having no empathy for those fleeing Ukraine. In my case, neither is true.
Covid, or rather the response to it, has bankrupted Europe. As you may know, I believe that the pandemic is a scam and that the subsequent economic devastation is deliberate.
A food shortage crisis looms large. Rising food, medicine, rent, gas and oil prices will plunge millions of households across Europe into abject poverty. In my opinion, we haven’t even begun to feel the economic shock of lockdowns yet.
Now factor in a refugee crisis and you’re looking down the barrel of total economic collapse. The next financial crash will make 2008 look like a blip.
In fact, the next financial crash will probably be the last one.
The Great Reset is happening now.
