In an interview with the New York Review of Books, billionaire financier George Soros has warned that the European Union is on the “v…………………………. of collapse” over the migrant crisis, which has seen more than a million migrants and refugees arrive in the region in 2015. Read the article by Yahoo!Finance and learn some useful expressions marked in green.
Before you start, test your knowledge of the following expressions!
mu………………………. through on crisis after another
marked a s…………. change in her policy
kicking the c………………………… down the road
kicking a b……………………………… uphill so that it keeps rolling back down
draw p………………………………………….. between (two things)
we need to watch o…………………… for radicalization
Have you got them right? Find it out in the text below!
Akos Stiller | Bloomberg | Getty Images.
“There is plenty to be nervous about,” the financier said. “As she (Merkel) correctly predicted, the EU is on the verge of collapse (=on the edge of collapse) The Greek crisis taught the European authorities the art of muddling through one crisis after another (=manage with difficulty). This practice is popularly known as kicking the can down the road (=delaying the decision, not really solving the problem), although it would be more accurate to describe it as kicking a ball uphill so that it keeps rolling back down (=having an extremely difficult task to carry out).”
“Merkel correctly foresaw the potential of the migration crisis to destroy the European Union. What was a prediction has become the reality. The European Union badly needs fixing. This is a fact but it is not irreversible. And the people who can stop Merkel’s dire prediction from coming true are actually the German people. Now it’s time for Germans to decide: Do they want to accept the responsibilities and the liabilities involved in being the dominant power in Europe?”
Soros’ comments come as Finland’s Finance Minister, Alex Stubb, told CNBC that Germany’s open policy on migrants was, “humane, that was probably the right thing to do at the time but the key issue here is that one of the fundamental freedoms of the European Union is under threat and that is the free movement of people and the whole Schengen agreement.” In his interview Wednesday, Stubb denied the idea that the Schengen zone, which allows the free passage of EU citizens through almost all of its members, is a security threat to Europe.”We shouldn’t draw parallels between [the] refugee crisis and terrorism. The roots of terrorism are much, much deeper than that.”
Read the whole article here.
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