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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Several countries have been distinctly hostile to the idea, and those along the Balkan route have successively closed their borders to certain nationalities. “Greece will not agree to deals (in the EU) if the allocation of responsibilities among member countries is not secured”.
Greece’s Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras spoke with German Chancellor Angela Merkel, expressing his deep displeasure over the failure of some European Union countries to stick to decisions on tackling the refugee crisis, his office said on Wednesday.
Greek migration minister Yannis Mouzalas criticised his neighbours for shirking their responsibilities amid the crisis.
“We have to reduce the influx now”.
The numbers are already causing political paroxysms in Europe, with Greece yesterday angrily protesting a decision by Macedonia to close its border to Afghan refugees, bottling some 8,000 new migrants on the frontier. More than 450 migrants, mainly Afghan nationals, were taken back to reception centers in the capital.
There are expectations that North Atlantic Treaty Organisation will finalize the mandate for the new operation on Wednesday.
“There is the potential for thousands of migrants coming here-not asylum seekers but migrants in transit who do not want to stay in France or Belgium but to go to Britain”, he said.
Interior and foreign ministers from Albania, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Kosovo, Macedonia, Montenegro, Serbia and Slovenia were invited to the one-day conference. However, Macedonia abruptly announced that Afghans would no longer be permitted to cross, and some 12,000 were left trapped on the Greek side of the border on Tuesday.
With all European Union attempts so far failing to halt the influx, countries through the western Balkans from Greece, as well as Austria, have begun unilaterally to impose border restrictions.
22 Feb 2016. Idomeni, Greece.
“If Macedonia does not re-open its border to Afghans soon, Greece’s sheltering capacity will be full within eight days”, a Doctors Without Borders spokeswoman, Gemma Gillie, told dpa.
Their sentiment was echoed by Filippo Grandi, the head of the United Nations refugee agency.
“We have denounced the humanitarian consequences of this domino effect time and again, but European governments on this route continue to invent new and arbitrary criteria with the sole goal of reducing the flow of people-at any cost, and in complete disregard of humanitarian needs”, says Aurelie Ponthieu, MSF humanitarian advisor on displacement.
There were an estimated 1,200 people at Idomeni, in their vast majority Afghans or individuals without proper travel documents.
Two Greek government officials said there were an estimated 20,000 migrants stranded in the country. – In Greece, authorities faced with the buildup bused 1,250 Afghans back to Athens on Tuesday.
A joint statement from the participants said that after hundreds of thousands of people trekked through the Balkans a year ago, many ending up in Germany, Sweden and also Austria, the inflow must be “massively reduced”.
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According to International Organization for Migration figures released Tuesday, more than 100,000 refugees and migrants have already crossed the Mediterranean – almost all via the Aegean from Turkey to Greece – since the start of 2016.
