Negotiations with Britain over EU reforms to give Prime Minister David Cameron a better shot at winning a referendum to stay an EU member are far from finished as they head into the final stretch. A British referendum could come as early as this summer, and the loss of one of the biggest member states — a member of the G7 group of richest economies and the United Nations Security Council — could be sealed. The rich member states who are the draw for the migrants complain the eastern Europeans are not doing their part to shelter refugees. Several eastern European nations complain that they lack the resources to handle large numbers of refugees and that the more prosperous nations are too soft-hearted and have allowed the borders to be overrun. Sharp divisions have become commonplace in part carried over from the financial crisis, which some cast as a clash between profligate states like Greece against penny-pinching Germany. The European Union was built on the ashes of World War II, first taking decades to bring economic wealth before taking on the task of bridging the huge ideological divide that cut the continent into a capitalist west and a communist east.
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