At least 10,000 people are camped at the Idomeni border crossing. “Do not believe the smugglers”, Tusk told a press conference in Athens after talks with Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras.
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His prediction ahead of a crucial summit in Brussels on Monday came as new official figures showed that a record 1.2 million asylum seekers arrived in the European Union in 2015 – more than double the figure from the year before.
“It is very important that people should know that if they come to Calais that is not a waiting room for getting into the United Kingdom, that we have strong borders”, said Cameron.
On a busy day of diplomacy, Tusk visited Greece and Turkey, the two countries on the frontline of Europe’s worst migration crisis since World War II, and acknowledged that the number of people seeking to reach European Union territory from Turkey remained “far too high”.
The EU aid package, which must be approved by member states and the European Parliament, was unveiled just days after German Chancellor Angela Merkel said that debt-hit Greece must not be allowed to plunge into refugee “chaos”.
Austria angered Greece by not inviting it to a meeting of Balkan leaders in Vienna last week to coordinate a slew of border restrictions.
Opposition parties denounced the government’s plans, saying the deployment of the army would raise tensions among Balkan countries that are still reeling from the wars in the 1990s.
Only a few are being let into Macedonia daily, as FYR Macedonian authorities are pacing themselves with the rate of acceptance on their northern border with Serbia.
Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu says continued breaches of a Syria cease-fire by Russian and Syrian forces have rendered a truce there “vulnerable” and are not helping the refugee or migrant crisis.
Macedonia intermittently opened the crossing on Wednesday, letting several hundred people in, mainly families with small children, as European Council President Donald Tusk arrived in the country for talks on the migration crisis.
Idomeni: Some 13,000 refugees are crammed in unhygienic conditions on Greece’s border with Macedonia, officials said Saturday, with all eyes on a key EU-Turkey summit on Monday that is seen as the only viable solution to the crisis.
The U.N. refugee agency said this week that the constant influx of new arrivals in Greece, the main gateway into Europe, meant the economically ravaged country faced “an imminent humanitarian crisis”.
The EU agreed an action plan in November with Turkey to halt the flow but the numbers have fallen only slightly and are expected to increase again in the summer, fuelling sharp divisions within the bloc over what to do next.
The EU would also allocate a further 95 milllion euros in aid for refugees in Turkey, he said, the first part of three billion euros in assistance that Brussels has promised under the deal.
IDOMENI, Greece (AP) – A regional governor called on the Greek government Saturday to declare a state of emergency for the area surrounding the Idomeni border crossing where thousands of migrants are stranded due to border restrictions along the route toward western Europe.
It is the first time the 28-member bloc has responded to a situation within its borders in the same way as it treats humanitarian disasters in developing countries.
In a planning document on how to fully restore the Schengen zone by December at the latest, the Commission said that beyond trade, the re-imposition of borders “would also risk putting in jeopardy the judicial and police cooperation”.
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Up to 32,000 migrants were stranded in Greece after Austria and the Balkans chose to decrease the number of transiting migrants.
