The incoherencies at the heart of the EU’s policy making have become sharper in the past six months, former Prime Minister Alfred Sant told the European Parliament in Strasbourg.

Commenting during a debate marking the closing of the Dutch Presidency of the EU, Dr Sant said that following the terrorist attacks on Brussels, the Dutch referendum on the Ukraine agreement and now Brexit, the EU construct was being increasingly seen as ineffective.

 “We are told that the only viable way forward is by promoting more Europe. That negotiating Brexit will mean first negotiating a British exit, then negotiating what arrangement to apply for relations with the UK.

“That managing the migration crisis involves a deal with Turkey that amounts to a hidden strategy of refoulement plus the creation of an external borders agency.

“That to beat terrorism the cooperation between national security services needs to be strongly reinforced.

“All this is highlighting divergences within the Union between its heterogenous parts, already accelerated by the neo-liberal austerity that is the hallmark of what goes for economic policy.”

Dr Sant said it was puzzling that so many were failing to see that to stabilise the situation the European Union needed consolidation.

This, he said, should take full account of national perspectives and interests, with as first priority, the need to counter the divergences that developed between Union’s north and south, and east and centre.