Hit by migrants, 'European values' are crumbling

The current president of Italy's chamber of deputies, Laura Boldrini, knows a lot about refugees. Before she took over her latest public office during Italian Prime Minister Mateo Renzi's term in 2013, she was the spokesperson for the U.N.'s High Commissioner for Refugees and dealt with the crisis of refugees and migrants flooding her country. As a journalist for RAI she covered world crises in such "hot spots" from Yugoslavia to Rwanda.

So, when the residents of Lesbos welcomed the Italian politician from the Left Ecology Freedom party last week to their island, they knew this would be a person who could understand them better. 

Out of almost 2,000 refugees and migrants who manage to reach the Aegean islands every day, Lesbos has taken the largest share. This big island - the third biggest in Greece - where a large part of its population claims ancestry from the cities and villages across the sea on the Turkish coast, knows what survival means.

The grandparents of the island's present inhabitants had crossed the same sea some 90 years ago, escaping from a bloody war and a forced population exchange. 

During the current refugee crisis, Lesbos - known also as the "red island" because of its traditional strong support for communist and leftist parties for more than half a century - showed a characteristic communal spirit towards refugees. With the country already deep in an economic crisis for more than six years, central Greek authorities unable to cope with a costly and demanding problem that stretched their capacity over the limits saw the mobilization of the inhabitants of Lesbos to help the refugees as a welcoming helping hand. 

However, since last summer, when the world was admiring photos of the "grandmothers of...