Hardly is Angela Merkel’s vacation over, and fresh headaches are approaching. She began the late summer with an urgent trip to Spain on Saturday, when she attempted to start picking at the tightest and most complicated of Gordian knots — how to regulate migration in Europe. Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez had already become the one of the first European leaders to reach a new bilateral migration deal with Germany, which means Berlin will be able to send a few refugees back to Spain if they have already registered there.
The most profound byproduct of that agreement, and the deals that Merkel’s administration will be trying to strike in the coming weeks, is that Germany has been forced to admit the Dublin system is no longer functioning.
