Merkel’s response to the refugee crisis has made the situation worse

Having, effectively, unilaterally ripped up the EU agreement on how to handle refugees, Germany is now desperately trying to re-impose the rules. At the start of this month, Angela Merkel’s government declared that any Syrian who could reach the country could claim asylum in Germany. This was contrary to the Dublin Convention of 1990 which set out that refugees should seek asylum in the first EU member state that they arrive in.

Predictably, Germany’s actions led to a huge surge in the number of refugees trying to reach the country. The volume of people coming is now so great that Berlin has had to put in place controls on the Austrian border. It is also saying that it won’t accept refugees who have been fingerprinted or admitted in another EU state. In other words, it wants the Dublin Convention to apply once more.

This U-turn reveals how ill thought through Merkel’s policy on refugees was.