But as the southern German province of Bavaria, which borders Austria, has complained increasingly stridently to Berlin that it is reaching the limits of its capacity to receive refugees, concern in Austria has risen that Germany could further restrict arrivals, creating a backlog.
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Signs are beginning to appear of tensions among the thousands of migrants waiting in Slovenia to enter Austria, The New York Times reports.
“Yet here we are more than half a century later facing the prospect of thousands – maybe hundreds of thousands – of displaced people freezing and starving in the grasslands of eastern Europe as winter closes in”, he said.
At the Sunday summit, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban said he was “just an observer” at the meeting, saying his country had solved the problem of economic migrants flooding his country and offered to give advice to other countries on how to build fences of their own.
He also said that promises of financial support had not been kept.
Based on the number of refugees “both this month, as well as over the course of 2015, Afghanistan ranks number two in the list of countries of origin of refugees – that’s unacceptable”, German Interior Minister Thomas De Maizière told journalists Wednesday.
Wednesday, at least five migrants including three children, died after four boats sank between Turkey and Greece, as rescue workers searched the sea for dozens more, the Greek coast guard said.
“This is about ensuring an orderly, controlled entry into our country, not about shutting down the border”, Mikl-Leitner told public broadcaster Oe1 on Wednesday (local time). About 577,000 people seeking asylum came to Germany from January to the end of September this year, 164,000 of them in September alone, authorities say.
The small Alpine nation of Slovenia, which has been swamped by migrants recently, also reiterated its readiness to erect a fence along its Croatian frontier if new European Union plans aimed at improving the situation failed to produce quick results. Austrian Interior Minister Johanna Mikl-Leitner emphasized that the fence is about regulation rather than blocking or control. We’ve had between 3,000 and 8,000 people crossing the border (a day).
(AP Photo/Darko Bandic). Migrants look out from a train that brought them from Croatia, in Dobova, Slovenia, Tuesday, October 27, 2015.
As part of the plan, the European Union has pledged to send 400 police officers from other bloc members to Slovenia.
That has prompted Austria to move to build barriers at its border with Slovenia, now the preferred route for those trying to reach western Europe.
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She also rejected recent criticism from German politicians, such as Minister-President of Bavaria Horst Seehofer, that Austria was irresponsibly allowing the massive influx of migrants through its territory and onward to Germany, noting that the Merkel government’s decision not to repatriate Syrians had triggered the influx, sending a signal that Austria is experiencing the effects. In comments to reporters during a state visit to China, King Willem-Alexander said that, “In the Netherlands we talk things out, we don’t fight them out”.
