Though it was not only Merkel’s decision to make, nevertheless the German Chancellor’s powerful statement dragged the whole continent along with her, whether they wanted it or not. In a Europe whose borders had come down and in which free movement had become a doctrinal principle, the mass movement through Europe by people from outside began to cause continent-wide problems. Germany’s neighbours saw hundreds of thousands of people walking through their territory on their way north into Germany. During 2015 around 400,000 migrants moved through Hungary’s territory alone. Fewer than twenty of them stopped to claim asylum in Hungary. And this great surge of people broke out all over the rest of Europe as well. Tens of thousands of people from the Balkans, who had otherwise been unable to find a legal way to go north into Germany, joined the great movement of people moving across their countries from the south. At the same time the movement even further north swelled. The Swedish government announced an upsurge in its desire to take the flow and soon every day thousands of people were heading into Denmark, sometimes to stay rather than moving on to Sweden. During 2015 more than 21,000 people applied for asylum in Denmark (three times the figure of two years before), but far more surged on up into Sweden. Of course there were quibbles, and of course there were those who protested against this policy outright. But at this crucial moment a movement that risked becoming depersonalised by the sheer numbers suddenly took on a human face.