UKIP MEP: We've got enough criminals, keep Kosovo out of EU

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Batten's quite right. We have no need to enable vast numbers of people to come from poor, dangerous, lawless societies.

Enough is enough.

Two thoughts come to mind:

1) How close is Kosovo to meeting accession criteria to the EU by anything that remotely resembles a rational point of view?

2) Blaming Kosovars for contributing to crime in the United Kingdom rather begs the question of what the United Kingdom is doing to prevent crime being committed by its home grown criminals.

It all seems like political grandstanding to me, from a policy cupboard that's rather bare.

It's not at the moment, yet as with every other country in the EU when it comes to accession, poorer and poorer countries loom in the background.



You didn't read what Batten said.

What he said was that the crime situation in the UK is bad enough, and we don't need more people coming in from a very, very poor, crime-ridden country.

I'm sure that Batten will be the first to agree with you on the subject of home-grown criminals.

Should the EU really be expanding period?

The mistake the EU made was expanding beyond the 1995 borders. IMO, the euro should either never have happened or should have been restricted to a few countries in Western Europe.

But given accession criteria, what's the real risk? While every accession creates a new pool of mobile, cheap labour, to be sure, it also creates new markets to exploit. EU expansion is far from a zero-sum game.



Au contraire, I did read it, and this is precisely what begs the question.

Why is Batten wasting valuable oxygen over imaginary Kosovar criminals, when his attention should be better placed trying come up with strategies to prevent existing crime. What he is engaged in is an exercise in diversion. Since he has nothing new, productive, interesting or intelligent to say about crime prevention, he will, instead, start scapegoating.

...because with UKIP, like all other right of centre parties, their first, last and only recourse is the politics of fear.

Batten's point is that your pool of "mobile, cheap labour" and the effects of crime are felt by people in the UK, predominantly people in poorer/working class neighbourhoods. These people are suffering due to the misguided immigration policies of the élite.



If you actually read the context of his comments, they were during the debate in the European Parliament on further EU integration on Kosovo.

If you don't expect an anti-EU MEP to oppose Kosovo's entry to the EU in a debate like that, you're rather deluded.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qVr51ePCg-g[/youtube]



Who said that we fear anyone? We don't fear Kosovo as a country, we just don't think that very poor countries joining the EU benefits either the countries in question, nor the countries that have to deal with the mass influx of people.

Batten is saying that countries like Kosovo, and Romania, have particularly serious problems within those countries that haven't been addressed.

Isn't the EU itself a product of fear? Fear of being dominated by Superpowers, fear of war between countries? Isn't that why they won the Nobel Peace Prize?

I remember reading a lot of French Europhiles in particular saying that the EU is needed as major regional power to act as a counterbalance to America.

But when it really did count, as in the former Yugoslavia of the 1990s, what were the EU doing? Bugger all; in fact, they did less than nothing - they let them massacre each other.

These people are suffering, but I doubt that migration lies at the root of their suffering.

Study after study has demonstrated the linkage between poverty and crime. The greater the disparity between "have" and "have not" in a society, the higher the violent crime rate will be. The greater the barriers to income assistance, the higher the property crime rate will be. If a government wants to reduce crime, then government needs to tackle poverty. But it is cheaper to react to crime, and to warehouse criminals than it is to address poverty.

A closed migration policy will do nothing to address crime in the United Kingdom. The yawning gap between rich and poor ensures that.



I expect an anti-EU MEP to oppose Kosovo's entry on the rational grounds that Kosovo does not meet the accession criteria. Once the economy of Kosovo has expanded to a sufficient degree to permit accession, then it stands to reason that the conditions for individual Kosovars will have ameliorated as well. If, at that time, the prospect of Kosovar migration continues to present a legitimate fear, then by all means, make the argument. But to do so now makes him look like a cowardly fool, rather than a Parliamentarian.



You don't need to say it. Your postings are suffused with it. You live in abject terror of your sense of identity being ripped away from you, without any rational basis for that fear. You can dress your paranoia up in the language of economics, but it rings hollow.

Kosovo is great for frightening children, but is EU ascension truly realistic in the next decade? I doubt it. I am not sure if anyone has noticed, but the EU has serious internal troubles. I doubt anyone wants to expand at the moment.

The only thing holding the EU together and the Eurozone intact is Germany.

ruveyn