LONDON — After an unparalleled tide of asylum-seekers washed onto European shores last summer and fall, the continent’s leaders vowed to use the relative calm of winter to bring order to a process marked by chaos.
But with only weeks to go before more favorable spring currents are expected to trigger a fresh surge of arrivals, the continent is no better prepared. And in critical respects, it is even worse.
Ideas that were touted as answers to the crisis last year have either failed or remain stuck in limbo. Continental unity lies in tatters, with countries striking out to forge their own solutions — often involving a razor-wire fence. And even the nations that have been the most welcoming toward refugees say they are desperately close to their breaking point, or are already well past it.
The result, analysts say, is a continent fundamentally unequipped to handle the predictable resurgence of a crisis that is greater than any Europe has faced in its post-Cold War history.
‘‘It’s a very dangerous situation,’’ said Kris Pollet, senior policy officer at the European Council on Refugees and Exiles. ‘‘Anything can happen.’’
On Thursday, European leaders will have one last opportunity to reckon with the crisis before the pace of new arrivals inevitably begins to climb again in the spring. But few have any expectations that this week’s summit will succeed where countless others before it have failed.
‘‘Europe can deal with this if it wants to. But there needs to be a political breakthrough. And I’m not optimistic,’’ Pollet said.
Without one, he said, ‘‘it’s going to be chaos. That’s clear.’’
The scale of disorder and political disruption could be even greater than what Europe faced in 2015.
The numbers themselves are already of an entirely new magnitude: Although arrivals are down from the height of the crisis last fall, the number of people who crossed the sea to reach Europe in the first six weeks of the year — around 75,000 — is 25 times higher than it was during the same period last year. More than 400 have drowned along the way.
On the Greek islands, the most common European landing spot for people fleeing war and oppression in the Middle East, South Asia, and North Africa, thousands have arrived even on days when the rough winter seas were churned by gale-force winds.
But once the asylum-seekers have landed in Europe, the continent still has no coherent system for managing the flows. Just three out of an intended 11 ‘‘hot spots’’ — locations in Italy and Greece where those deemed likely to receive asylum will be separated from those expected to be denied — were up and running at the start of the week. A quota system that was intended to evenly distribute 160,000 refugees across the continent has similarly foundered: Fewer than 500 people have taken part. Countries in eastern and central Europe, meanwhile, have boycotted the program.
With countries improvising their own responses to the mass migration, the most basic tenet of Europe’s post-Cold War identity — that national leaders should act collaboratively to reach continent-wide solutions to common problems — is being called into question as never before.
At most immediate risk is Europe’s decades-old system for borderless travel, the Schengen zone. European leaders have warned that it could come crashing down within months, and it has already been riddled by an array of new fences, military patrols, and ID checks where once there was free movement.
Greece could be the first casualty of Schengen’s decline, with the rest of the European Union threatening to kick the cash-starved nation out of the free-movement club unless authorities in Athens can get better control of the nation’s sea border with Turkey. Last week, the EU gave Greece a three-month deadline to do just that.
countries including Poland and Hungary are attempting to form an antirefugee front ahead of this week’s Brussels summit, seeking to combine forces on a plan that would effectively trap refugees in Greece and allow them to travel no further into Europe.
