When Fourteen is Really Eleven

It is sort of a mystery.

The German news media covers this to some extent, and I'll reference an ARD article over this as the basis.

After Chancellor Merkel wrapped up this emergency meeting at the EU and started to pump out all this positive talk of how future things will happen....the immigration will be shifted....and Seehofer's list of solutions probably won't be necessary, an odd thing occurred.

In her 'big' statement that fourteen EU countries agreed to take back migrants who'd signed into these countries originally (triggering the Dublin Agreement rule, which says....where you sign in, is where you stay and process....you don't go elsewhere in the EU), it wasn't really true.

So far, Hungary, Czech and Poland....have come back and said 'NO', we didn't ever agree to take signees back.

 What really happened?  A spokesperson from the Berlin leadership spoke up and said "The Czech side had expressed a willingness to negotiate an administrative agreement on improved cooperation on repatriation."

In basic terms...they simply said they'd be willing to sit at a table and talk more about the Dublin Agreement, its structure, and how to improve it.  Otherwise, that was all they suggested.  I suspect the same from Poland and Hungary. 

So how did Merkel come to the 14 countries in full agreement?  That's part of the mystery.  We may very well find that once you hand a couple of countries a listing of 1,000 names each....that each country shifts to a long and drawn out process requiring a minimum of six months and maybe only half of the thousand returning to the point of origin. 

There are some odd things being played out.  For example....how many migrants in Germany, fall into this first-country-arrived scenario (invoking the Dublin Agreement)?  So far, the news media avoids this quantity number entirely.  If this were just 10,000....it wouldn't be a big deal.  If this were 100,000, it'd be a fairly significant deal. 

From the countries in this affected situation....who gets the bulk of the returnees? My humble guess is Greece and Italy.  I would imagine that Czech might only be looking at 100 or less returnees.  Same for Poland and Hungary.  But again....you don't see this discussed much.

If these folks were forced to return where they 'landed'....then what?  Would they even stay there, or would they go and sneak back into Germany?  My humble guess is that the bulk (probably over 90-percent) would return to Germany within 30 days.

So all of this hyped-up positive chatter by the German news media....just a spin by the Chancellor?  Yeah....more or less.  She needs it off the front page, and she needs Seehofer to drop his list of solutions.  If he fails to do so, and the SPD says the coalition is finished....then the whole thing goes to a fresh new election.  This....no one from the CDU or SPD, really desires.  In a sense, a whole lot of talk over something that can't be solved.