LONDON -- As European Union leaders prepare for a summit that starts Thursday in Brussels, experts say the combined strain of a refugee crisis, threats facing the euro currency and Britain's plan to hold a referendum on whether to leave the EU may be unbearable for the 28-nation bloc.
Informal mini-blocs have formed within the EU, with some countries banding together to challenge, or just ignore, the EU's announced refugee resettlement program. Temporary border controls have been introduced in key countries, including Germany and France, threatening the cherished notion of freedom of movement across European borders.
Britain, a nuclear power with a seat at the U.N. Security Council, is demanding concessions ahead of a referendum on whether Britain should simply abandon the EU bloc. And a slow-burning, extremely divisive budget crunch threatens the future of the euro single currency, which has been a hallmark of European integration.
Analysts say they believe the combined strain of these challenges may be unbearable for a political union and trading bloc that just 20 years ago seemed to be growing in stature as it proudly offered freedom and democracy -- along with lucrative subsidies, military alliances and billions in foreign investment -- to newly freed former Soviet satellites.
Ian Kearns, director of the European Leadership Network research group in London, said the EU is "undergoing an existential crisis" as a once-shared sense of mission fades. Countries are pursuing their perceived national interests instead of seeking collective solutions, he said, and the notion of European solidarity is fading.
"The challenge is the lack of faith in the mainstream political class in Europe that is evident across the continent, manifested in the rise of populist movements," Kearns said. "The migration crisis has simply highlighted it."
The summit is one of a series of meetings that have tried, but mostly failed, to find an effective collective response to the chaotic arrival of so many people. Leaders will consider fairly minor changes to Britain's status aimed at placating restive British voters ahead of a referendum, and assess how well -- or poorly -- earlier edicts on migration have been implemented.
Anand Menon, director of the U.K. in a Changing Europe group at King's College London, said the European Union simply doesn't have a practical method of tackling its myriad mounting problems.
The structures set up when the union was formed by six countries as the European Economic Community in 1958, and diluted with the addition of so many countries with differing perspectives, are simply too weak, he said, so nations either make unilateral decisions or forge small alliances with other countries in the bloc that share their concerns.
"The EU is where it's been for the last few years: Very big crises without the tools to address them," Menon said. "It's a halfway house of integration. You have a little bit of authority in these areas -- the migrants, Greece -- but the big decisions are made by the member states. It's fragmented because the member states have completely different views."
For this reason, analysts say, they are struggling to cope with the influx of people from the Middle East, Africa and elsewhere.
"The countries in the south like Greece and Italy are facing the brunt of it," Menon said. "A few countries in the north -- Germany and the Scandinavians -- were generous at first and are now regretting it. The Brits are pretending it's not happening. And the Visegrad countries [Hungary, Poland, the Czech Republic and Slovakia] say they are not interested in helping for reasons of culture and history. They say they have no history of taking in migrants."
In Macedonia on Sunday, Dutch foreign minister Bert Koenders urged EU member states not to close their borders to migrants, suggesting that "effective border control is more important."
Koenders, whose country holds the rotating 6-month EU presidency, told reporters in the Macedonian capital, Skopje, that the Netherlands will continue to talk with Austria, Macedonia and Greece to find an effective solution on migrants and avoid unilateral measures.
In Sweden, police said they have arrested a man suspected of killing one person and wounding three others during a fight among asylum-seekers. Soderhamn police spokesman Christer Nordstrom said Sunday that they are holding a man in his early 20s on suspicion of murder and attempted murder. He said it wasn't clear what type of weapon was used in the attack but that the victim had died from cuts or stab wounds. He said that about 15 men were involved in the brawl.
Officials had expected the flow of desperate people fleeing war and poverty would slow during the winter months, but the International Organization for Migration said last week that 76,000 people -- nearly 2,000 per day -- have reached Europe by sea since Jan. 1, a nearly tenfold increase over the same period the year before. More than 400 have died, most of them drowning in frigid waters.
Warning of the implication of a British exit, set to be discussed at the Brussels summit, German Chancellor Angela Merkel's senior foreign-policy lawmaker, Norbert Roettgen, said Europe needs more unity, not less.
"We cannot any longer delegate this matter of European security to the U.S.," Roettgen, who heads the German parliament's foreign affairs committee, said at the Munich Security Conference on Sunday. "We have to pour in a much, much higher amount of financial, political, military resources. We have, as Europeans, to care for our security -- this is fundamentally new."
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry echoed those concerns, saying that a British exit would weaken Europe just as it needs strength to deal with the twin challenges of refugees and terrorism.
"Europe is going to emerge stronger than ever, provided it stays united and builds common responses to these challenges," Kerry said to applause at the Munich conference on Saturday. "Obviously, the United States has a profound interest in your success, as we do in a very strong United Kingdom staying in a strong EU."
U.K. Prime Minister David Cameron needs approval from every other nation in the EU to secure a deal at the Brussels summit. That would pave the way for him to hold a referendum on staying in the bloc as early as June 23 and campaign against a British withdrawal. As a week of diplomacy gets underway, the U.K.'s role in fighting Islamic State militants and Europe's divisions over how to handle refugees underscore the stakes.
Information for this article was contributed by Gregory Katz and staff members of The Associated Press and by Ian Wishart of Bloomberg News.
A Section on 02/15/2016