However, yesterday they said in Ljubljana that Slovenia can start construction of a fence along its border, like Hungary, if the agreement on assistance to the countries of Eastern Europe in connection with the influx of migrants will not be realized. More than 500,000 migrants have entered Greece so far by sea from Turkey, and more than 120 have drowned.
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More than half a million migrants have passed through Greece so far this year, many fleeing Syria’s civil war on a short but perilous crossing from Turkey on inflatable rubber boats.
Most migrants are heading for western Europe and particularly Germany, and on Tuesday officials said a group were locked in a standoff with Swedish authorities, saying the village where they have been taken is “too cold” and isolated.
Dombrovskis was in Athens for talks with the finance and economy ministers on Greece’s latest economic reform efforts under the terms of its 86 billion euro bailout.
Dombrovskis said the Commission wants protection limited to households that “clearly” need it.
“Unilateral action may trigger a chain reaction”, the joint statement read – reflecting what is already fact, as states have variously sealed off borders or moved and deposited busloads of undocumented migrants at their neighbours’ frontiers.
See what believers in other European countries are doing with OM’s help.
European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker told EU lawmakers Tuesday that “the member states have been moving slowly at a time when they should be running”. He said Serbia would not “put up any walls” like Hungary’s new razor wire-topped border fences. Migrant movements to Europe have tripled between 2014 and 2015, worldwide Organisation for Migration and UNHCR figures show.
Dimitris Avramopoulos, the European Commissioner responsible for migration said that there is a lack of spirit of cooperation and asked for more solidarity and more action to be taken.
Registered A number of European Union member states criticised Greece’s handling of the crisis during Sunday’s mini-summit in Brussels, stressing that all refugees should be properly registered in the country where they first arrive.
As Syrian, Iraqi, and Afghan refugees pour onto the beaches of Lesbos, OM Greece and partner organisations offer water, essential items, and, more importantly, hope. Although in previous years the main crossing was the long sea route from Libya to Italy, this year more refugees have braved the far shorter but still unsafe crossing from Turkey to Greece.
But, as Al Jazeera’s Robin Forestier-Walker reports from the Slovenia-Croatia border, volunteer aid workers said they are being prevented from offering much-needed help to refugees.
The refugee emergency has heightened tensions in the Balkans which have simmered since the wars in former Yugoslavia in the 1990s, and a few of those strains surfaced in Brussels.
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“I have no doubt that this challenge has the potential to change the European Union we have built”, he told the European Parliament in Strasbourg.
