When interests trump values

Europe is torn between upholding its values and pursuing its interests in the multiple crises over refugees, challenges to the rule of law, relations with Russia and Turkey, and Britain's membership that are shaking the European Union.

Political and economic interests are mostly prevailing over the EU's declared values and governance standards, but it is not clear that the outcomes are any more effective.

To critics including human rights campaigners, Europe is too willing to betray its principles. To supporters, it is "growing up" and acting less naively.

"Politics is the art of the possible, but this is very different from the conception of Europe promoted for the last half century," said Michael Leigh, senior adviser at the German Marshall Fund think-tank on transatlantic relations and a former senior European Commission official.

After more than a million migrants flooded into Europe last year, EU governments are divided on whether the bloc should give priority to its commitment to give asylum to refugees, or whether the main aim should be to toughen border controls and pay other countries to keep potential asylum-seekers at bay. The sullen reluctance of most of the EU - not just central European states but core partners like France - to take in quotas of refugees to which they agreed months ago is driven by fear of a domestic political backlash.

Brussels faced another of those values-versus-interests dilemmas last week when the executive European Commission had to decide whether to launch disciplinary action over Polish laws shackling the constitutional court and the state media. The Commission did take a first step on Poland but stressed it wanted to resolve the issue in dialogue .

Major EU members Germany and Britain have mostly kept quiet about Poland on pragmatic grounds. London needs Polish goodwill as it renegotiates sensitive aspects of its own EU membership. Eager to curb the access of EU migrants - mostly Poles - to in-work welfare benefits to deter further mass immigration to Britain, it is the last country likely to criticise Warsaw over civil rights.

Similar mixed feelings guided the EU's schizophrenic response to Russia's 2014 seizure and annexation of Crimea and moves to destabilise eastern Ukraine. While the bloc did agree to impose sectoral sanctions that have pushed the Russian economy into recession and restricted its access to capital, there are charges of double standards when it comes to energy.