New borders and restrictions have led to an an increase in the number of migrants at Greece’s Idomeni checkpoint from 5,000 to 14,000, Greek media reported Thursday. But if agreed, €300m will be available in 2016, with two instalments of €200m to follow in 2017 and 2018 – a sign European Union authorities are not expecting refugee numbers to abate anytime soon. Macedonian police fired tear gas to disperse hundreds of migrants who stormed the border from Greece on Monday. According to Express and Daily Mail, a 19-foot-wide, eight-mile-high barbed wire fence along Greece and Macedonia’s border has effectively sealed off the smaller country. Of the 4.8 million registered Syrian refugees, 2.7 million are in Turkey.
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More than half of them are Afghans who have found their path to other European countries blocked.
The court in the city of Linz, west of Vienna, didn’t identify the 41-year-old, in keeping with Austrian confidentiality laws.
Tusk also said that Greece, or any other country in Europe, will not serve as a transit country anymore as the Schengen rules will be implemented again. “It is all for nothing”, Mr Tusk said.
Tusk was visiting the nations along the so-called Balkan migrant corridor where tensions have risen over migrant pileup.
The U.N. refugee agency is praising Greece’s effort to take in refugees while scolding some of its European neighbors for suddenly slamming shut their borders and not keeping their promises – causing a “looming humanitarian crisis” on the continent.
At a single border point, the Idomeni crossing between Greece and Macedonia, between 12,000 and 15,000 stranded people were in need of urgent humanitarian assistance, he said.
Authorities have restricted the flow of migrants from the islands to Athens’ port of Piraeus, where about 1,000 people still arrived by ferry by midday Wednesday.
Destabilized by the arrival of tens of thousands of migrants, countries like Austria, Germany and Sweden have temporarily reintroduced ID checks.
Migrant children are at risk of poor health and abuse – that is the assessment of UNICEF.
He also had a direct message for them.
In one sign of possible progress, Turkey has offered to sign readmission agreements with 14 countries, the foreign ministry’s spokesman said on Wednesday, a move which would enable it to take back more quickly migrants rejected by the EU.
Officials in Brussels said the aim is to have the scheme operational on the ground “within weeks rather than months”.
Despite opposition from several European Union member states, in particular Hungary and Slovakia, the European Union in late 2015 adopted a quota system under which 160,000 refugees who have landed in Italy and Greece would be shared out.
A woman holds a baby as migrants and refugees stand facing Greek police while waiting to cross into Macedonia on March 2, 2016, where thousands of people are stranded.
Greek police said Macedonia opened the crossing from midnight on Tuesday to 2am on Wednesday, and from 7am to 9am on Wednesday, admitting 170 people from Syria and Iraq.
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People continued to arrive as dusk approached, many of them on foot.
