[Osem]

For much of the past five years, Europe has been on edge; the crisis in the eurozone was seen as threatening the entire European project.

Leaders lined up to warn that: "If the euro fails, then Europe fails."

Now, in a brief passage of time, everything has changed.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel says the migrant crisis "will challenge us far more than Greece and the stability of the euro".

In Europe, the largest numbers of refugees is on the move since the aftermath of World War Two. An estimated 3,000 people a day are trying to make their future in Europe.

The crisis has overwhelmed Europe's leaders. There is no plan

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-34115570

Well why bother having plans eh?

Existing rules for processing people where they arrive have been discarded.

Temporary border controls have re-emerged on what are supposed to be passport-free borders. Fences are being strengthened.

There is tension and finger-pointing. One prime minister accused other leaders of "not telling the truth" about the migrants.

It was as foreseeable as Greece's economic woes yet nobody wanted to hear anything which might show up the EU for what it has become.

Well now the reality is starting to focus a few of the 'great minds' who led us down this route without a plan. Now the Germans and Swedes are realising that being so generous to refugees has created a tidal wave they cannot stop and they want others to relieve them of the problem their own policies created. What they failed to take on board is that we're not dealing with a finite number of refugees from one or two troubled countries we're now dealing with people from all over Africa and as far afield as Asia who believe that if they come here they will be allowed to stay. There are countless millions of such people and yet we have no plan for dealing with them as and when they decide that life's better here than there.

But then Germany's interior minister revealed that Germany might accept 800,000 migrants this year. The figures seemed to be growing on a daily basis.

And some were almost certainly economic migrants. A third of those arriving in Germany were from Albania, Kosovo and Serbia.

Mrs Merkel said at the weekend that "in order to be able to help those in distress, we also must tell those who are not in distress that they cannot stay with us".

The sheer scale of the crisis has left politicians floundering for answers.

The German chancellor has said: "If we don't succeed in fairly distributing refugees, then of course the Schengen question will be on the agenda for many."

What Angela Merkel was hinting at was that passport-free travel (a principle enshrined in the Schengen agreement) could be challenged.

Chaos without a plan...

I'll be interested to see how Merkel decides to a) remove the economic migrants that Germany has already admitted and b) prevent yet more from turning up on their borders demanding their right to a better life.