8:17 AM
@GayotFow People (albeit perhaps not as high or influential as Merkel) have been calling for many things, I doubt she would go through unilaterally
But you can see what France is already doing with Italy
I have not seen it first hand but everything I read suggests there are now effectively semi-systematic controls on trains
And they simply bounce people who might want to seek asylum, outside of any procedure
in the Dublin system, France is supposed to ask Italy first
Meanwhile, I know from a friend working in a charity offering legal support in detention centre than in Italy, charity workers go around encouraging detainees not to lodge an application and to go to France instead
The Dublin system is already dead
What could happen, what does happen in other matters, is that the Commission could start infringement proceedings (they can do that for ex-third pillar matters now) but since nobody has a solution and nobody wants to admit how bad the situation already is, they haven't done a thing
That's the unusual thing about Merkel (or about the short-lived intent of Hungary to stop taking back asylum seekers). You can already do pretty much what you want, establish border checks, bounce people, fail to register them, almost never take them back (I don't have them at hand but the stats are telling).
But if you say so loudly, then someone would have to react
I think it's all part of a German campaign to block any coming request to take more asylum seekers
They have also been circulating a completely ludicrous figure of 800000 new “expected” applications for this year.
The thing is that you must keep the checks ostensibly “random”
In France, they perform checks everyday but I vaguely recall reading somewhere that the police never stays in the same spot more than 6 hours or something.
Then you pick another border checkpoint or another point on the same road or whatever
I just added some bounties but it occurs to me that I chose the wrong strategy
I picked some very good and interesting questions among top-voted unanswered questions
But they are unanswered because they are too damn hard ! So I'll probably have to wait 7 days to start another bounty…