The Great Unravelling

I don’t know if you’ve been paying attention to the progressively unravelling situation in Europe. In 2015 Europe took in more than a million migrants from the Middle East, Afghanistan, and North Africa. In 2016, bolstered by the welcome mat laid out by German Chancellor Angela Merkel, they’re on track to take in more than twice as many. Germany doesn’t want to accept that many so the Germans are trying to spread those migrants around among other EU countries and many of the other EU countries are balking. The EU diplomats have cut a deal with the Turks whereby the Turks take back most of the migrants, the Europeans accept the Syrians, and the Turks get money and the ability to travel anywhere in Europe without visas. They might get a reconsideration of their application for EU membership, too, although I think we know what the answer will be.

The most recent development is that a quartet of the European countries that are on the front line of this conflict are closing their borders to Middle Eastern migrants. From the New York Times:

LONDON — The route that more than one million migrants have used to traverse southeastern Europe was effectively shut down Wednesday, when four Balkan nations stopped waving the migrants through on their journey northward.

The four countries — Slovenia, Serbia, Croatia and Macedonia — have closed their borders to new migrants with the implicit backing of the European Union, which announced an agreement with Turkey on Tuesday to slow the flow of migrants.

The deal has not been completed — that is supposed to happen at a summit meeting next week. But within hours of the announcement from Brussels, Slovenia and Serbia announced new restrictions on the entry of migrants.

The whole thing is creating an exotic stew of encouraging mass migration, fostering insecurity in Europe, making the Greeks look good, and making the Eurocrats look like the twits that they are.