Immigration as a form of contemporary threats to countries of the European Union

Throughout the history there were several mass migrations of population from a region or a country, even of the entire nations. The causes of such phenomena could always be classified into two main groups – expelling (preservation of personal safety) and attracting (seeking the better living conditions). In recent years, armed conflicts and economic conditions in the Middle East countries have motivated a large number of members of local peoples to move, causing mass migrations of population, mainly towards the EU countries. Over time, the intensity of migrant flows has grown to the extent that they started to affect the functioning of transit and destination countries. The immigration is a sort of challenge or threat, as seen from any perspective. This fact has forced the reactions of all involved countries to adapt to new conditions and reduce the negative impact. As this is the first time in recent history that such mass migration is recorded, the inexperience of the administrative apparatus of the European Union has led to solutions that, for the time being, proved to be ineffective in practice. This paper aims to partially examine the impact of migrant crisis on key aspects of the European Union – security, economic, cultural, and demographic ones