I demand that those relief efforts are squared with the realities of limited resources so that as many people as possible can be helped and the people most in danger are prioritized. If you say that people from war zones are to be given refuge no limits -and we know there are millions of them- and since our 'European partners' don't have much appetite to share the responsibility then that is effectively an open border policy. At least for the upper- and middle-classes that according to what is said here can afford the trek.

Anyway, we're running in circles here (as usual in a leftwing debate club). Facts on the ground have overtaken the discussion and my pessimistic predictions are coming true. Germany has reintroduced border controls to Austria.

We can't do it after all - Süddeutsche

On Sunday the government made a spectacular u-turn and thereby admitted: "We can't do it after all." For the chancellor it is a political miscalculation that she had yet to commit during her ten years in office. For the nation it is the beginning of an intense political fight. And for Europe the message is: Germany has understood that it can't revolutionize the EU's asylum policy on its own.

... The collapse of the registration of refugees in Munich, the refusal of more solidarity even from other German states: the darwinism of impositions has reached Germany. The double morals that were diagnosed in the rest of Europe long ago have seized the country that created a mirage of a welcoming culture in the many refugee camps from Syria to Pakistan. No, Germany could not be open for everybody because the sheer number of refugees wouldn't have placed an excessive financial but a social burden on the country.

... [The border] controls therefore have a symbolic character. They are the German version of a message that France, the UK or Hungary are transmitting in some brutal form or another: we can't and don't want to shelter everyone. That is the hard lesson of the refugee crisis: heart and reason can't be brought in line.

_{Schengen is toast!}