Inside Europe: Ten Years Of Turmoil

Episode three, Unstoppable, forensically exposes how the European leaders fought each other over how to deal with the arrival of refugees and migrants from north Africa and Syria.

As hundreds of thousands marched north, Europe divided. Nowhere was this clearer than the passionate arguments between the Commission President, Jean-Claude Juncker, who wanted to give the EU power to solve the crisis, and the European Council President, Donald Tusk, who was trying to protect the interests of its member states. The Eastern bloc wanted none of Juncker’s solution - Hungary’s Viktor Orban took matters into his own hands and closed its borders to the migrants.

The story begins when Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi hears news of the sinking of a migrant boat off the coast of Italy in April 2015.

This crisis leads Renzi into the heart of the EU’s debate about how to handle the arrival of refugees and migrants. As the crisis worsens, the powerful German Chancellor Angela Merkel becomes centrally involved. She manages to wins over President Francois Hollande to the idea of compulsory quotas for relocating migrants across the EU, but they run into intense opposition from the Eastern European member states of the EU.

This conflict brings the EU to brink of collapse as the top leaders try to force their deal through.

They’re forced to rethink, and Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte forms an audacious plan to work with Turkey to solve the crisis. But he is upstaged by the Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu the night before the EU plan was to be put to the European Council.

Publicity contact: MH