The fight over the Kavanaugh confirmation is eating up most of the news cycle, but let’s not entirely lose sight of the deteriorating situation in the European Union. In addition to Brexit, they’re still facing an internecine battle among their members over immigration and the migrant refugee crisis, with more than a few member nations openly rebelling against EU control on the issue. WIth a number of countries up in arms, including Italy, Sweden, Austria, Hungary, Poland and more, the open border socialists are feeling the need to strike back.

Stepping up to lead this effort is French President Emmanual Macron, who promises to make the elections of 2019 a battleground in the fight for more open borders. In a recent address to a migration summit in Salzburg, Austria, Macron vowed harsh action against the countries that refuse to toe the line. This comes from Europe1. The original is in French, and their English translation is a bit rough but they get the gist across.

“Europe is not a menu à la carte, it’s a political project,” the French president declared, speaking at the end of an EU mini-summit on migration in Salzburg Thursday evening.

At a press conference following the meeting of European leaders, Macron acknowledged there was “a crisis and tensions” over the topic but, crying out, “Who generates them?” the former investment banker launched a broadside at nations which reject asylum seekers and those which “refuse to let boats dock on its ports”.

Those weren’t the only threats that Macron was making. He went on to state that non-compliant countries should be hit in the wallet, saying, “Countries that do not want more Europe, they will no longer touch the structural funds and therefore it is necessary that next spring we have this discussion in truth.”

There are currently 28 members in the EU, all of whom have the opportunity to obtain some of these “structural funds” for projects deemed worthy by the union, but with everyone also paying into the system. Macron is threatening (currently) Poland, Italy, Sweden, Romania, Hungary, Bulgaria, Austria, Czech Republic, Slovenia and Slovakia. And if those nations feel that they will be cut off from EU funding, why would they continue to pay into the system?

This seems like a rash call on Macron’s part, besides the fact that he really can’t make such a unilateral threat to begin with. I suspect that Brussels has already learned their lesson from the disastrous results they encountered when they tried to force Hungary to comply with their immigration mandates. The plan utterly failed and the EU leaders were left looking foolish. They’re going to need to find a better compromise with the countries most opposed to open borders and limitless migration or the EU is simply going to fall apart.

And would that be such a bad thing? Europe is a continent, not a country. It’s composed of more than two dozen nations that each have their own rich ancestry and heritage. Trying to bind them into one, cohesive unit has always looked problematic, at least as viewed from this side of the pond.