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European Migrant Crisis: Italy threatens to use ‘nuclear option’ and give EU visas to migrants

Even after three years since its beginning, the migrant crisis continues to ravage Europe and threaten the integrity of the European Union. While the flows of new migrants arriving in Europe have somewhat dried since its peak in 2015, when more than a million arrived in Europe mostly via the Turkey-Greece route, the flow has been increasing again this year. So far, more than 100,000 refugees have arrived in Europe and 85 percent of them came to Italy.

This year Italy has issued several warnings to its European counterparts, urging them to do more to share the burden. While the EU has adopted a burden sharing deal back in 2015, it is not being implemented fully across the EU. Several countries like Hungary, Poland, and the Czech Republic have refused to take in a single migrant and fighting a battle at the EU court over the issue. While the EU remains trapped in its bureaucracy, Italy is once again issuing a warning and this time a serious one, in response to Austria’s blockade near the Italy-Austria border to prevent migrants from moving North.

Two weeks after Italy reacted with anger to Austria's deployment of troops and armored vehicles to the border between the two nations, and the reactivating of border controls at the Brenner Pass over concerns that Italy will be unable to handle the roughly 85,000 migrants and refugees who have entered the country so far in 2017, the Italian government has threatened to retaliate in way that assures an imminent migrant crisis as well as an escalation of tensions between the two EU nations with a ‘nuclear option’.

Italy is considering, issuing temporary visas to migrants, which would allow nearly 200,000 migrants living in the country to move north towards Austria and Germany.

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