Greece’s migration minister said he expects the number of stranded immigrants in his country to reach “tens of thousands” because of those moves.
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Authorities said the mostly Afghan migrants and refugees were being put on buses bound for Athens, in the south of the country, after the police operation started early on Tuesday.
At a petrol filling station at the community of Almyros, 270 kilometres north of Athens, up to 600 people, including Afghans, Syrians and Iraqis, waited for word on when their buses could continue the journey on to the Macedonian border.
Vienna has come under fire for organising Wednesday’s talks, not least from Greece, and for imposing last week daily limits on the number of migrants who can apply for asylum in Austria or transit to other countries.
In a separate statement, the United Nations refugee agency called on European countries to take a “unified approach” and denounced restrictions limiting access for asylum seekers, including some based on nationality.
Greek police removed migrants from the Greek-Macedonian border on Tuesday after additional passage restrictions were imposed by Macedonian authorities. Greece’s foreign ministry said its that being left out meant that the conference was “an attempt to take decisions in Greece’s absence that directly affect Greece and Greek borders”.
The EU says Austrian caps on refugee numbers are illegal, while Germany – the economic powerhouse of the 28-nation EU and the destination for numerous people crossing Europe – is sending conflicting signals on the subject.
“We all believe in a European solution”.
Previous year saw more than one million migrants land on Europe’s shores.
“What we now see is European governments focused on feeding their electorate with the fear of migrants for clear electoral purposes”, Crepeau said, adding that governments were promising the public to keep migrants out of the country although they had no way to do that. Instead, he said, they “are only interested in transporting the refugees as fast as possible to central Europe”.
Migrants continued to camp outside and sleep rough at the Macedonian border overnight as organized facilities there remained filled to capacity.
As tensions grew along the so-called Balkans route, a statement by the European Commission yesterday warned that a “humanitarian crisis” was brewing in certain countries “especially in Greece”.
With the pace of arrivals showing no sign of abating – a record 11,000 people were registered on Aegean islands in the space of three days last week – Athens has been in a race against the clock to improve hosting facilities including “hot spot” screening centres and camps.
Bill Frelick, refugee program director at Human Rights Watch, accused European Union countries of turning a blind eye to the plight of Afghan asylum-seekers.
“Once again, Europe is resorting to closing its borders to asylum seekers, instead of coming up with realistic policies to address the plight of those fleeing war and repression”, Frelick said.
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Skopje said its move followed decisions by countries further up the western Balkan migrant route to turn back groups of Afghans, while Serbia announced a similar stance.
