The year 2015 will be remembered as seminal in the history of European integration. The European Union revealed its true nature as a fortress of capital in which international solidarity and human lives are of no value.

The EU demonstrated that its institutions not only suffer a democratic deficit, but are antidemocratic to their core. The ideological narrative of the peaceful coexistence of the European nations, and the economic convergence fueled by the free market, was substituted by racist ideologies about lazy Greeks and other Southerners who parasitize on the labor of the more competitive and industrious Northerners.

Parallel to that, the terrorist attacks in Paris both in early and late 2015 sent Islamophobia and xenophobia surging, with hundreds of thousands of refugees entering from Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Syria, and other countries that have withstood destruction for years, even decades, usually triggered or enabled by the West. The only party to benefit from the decision of the European countries and their common institutions against a humane and effective solution to the refugee crisis was the political far right that has already seized power in one third of Europe.