Four Central European states have rejected the European Union president’s proposal for a quota system to distribute the resettlement of refugees among all member states, the Associated Press reports.
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Pressing his Czech, Hungarian, Polish and Slovakian counterparts in Prague, Germany’s foreign minister warned that the influx of hundreds of thousands of migrants could be “the biggest challenge for the European Union in its history”.
But, as Slovak Foreign Minister Miroslav Lajcak said, the four Eastern European countries “have a different view” of the refugee crisis.
Earlier this week, Denmark shut off some traffic with Germany to curb refugees trying to reach Sweden, which remains much more welcoming than other Scandinavian countries, but later allowed them to travel through.
“We need to have control over how many (migrants) we are capable of accepting”, said Czech Foreign Minister Lubomir Zaoralek, who hosted the meeting.
But Steinmeier’s appeal to agree to European Commission proposals unveiled on Wednesday to share around 160,000 migrants among the 28-nation bloc fell on deaf ears.
Most of the refugees land in Italy or Greece, and then head for the wealthier countries of northern Europe by transiting through countries in Eastern Europe and the Balkans, like Macedonia, Serbia, and Hungary. Austria temporarily suspended border checks, letting refugees pass through Vienna on their way to Germany regardless of their first point of entry.
Austrian police have shut down sections of the roadway between Vienna and the Hungarian border as asylum-seekers have formed a long line and are walking toward the capital.
Hungary has announced it will build a fence on its Serbian border in an effort to keep migrants from entering Europe.
From the smugglers who pack them into leaky boats, to taxi drivers who charge exorbitant sums to ferry them across land, some people have sought to profit from the migrants’ plight.
Budapest’s Keleti railway terminus, for days a campsite of migrants barred from taking trains west to Austria and Germany, rapidly emptied as smiling families boarded a huge queue of buses, leaving behind them scattered shoes, clothes and mattresses. The surge, which Hungarian police said saw a record 3,601 people enter the country on Thursday, forced Austria’s train operator to suspend services with Hungary due to “massive overcrowding”. And Steinmeier said Germany expects some 40,000 migrants to arrive this weekend.
Mr Spindler said “trucks are on the way” after the Geneva-based agency won government approval to send 300 prefabricated homes to provide temporary housing to refugees awaiting registration by authorities.
Spokesman Josh Earnest said Obama had ordered staff to “scale up” the number after over 62,000 Americans signed a petition calling on Washington to take in more people.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel on Friday also took flak from her conservative allies in the southern state of Bavaria where most of the migrants arrive.
Human Rights Watch on Friday released video footage from inside a holding facility at the Hungarian border town of Roszke. Metal fences surrounded clusters of tents and divided migrants into groups.
Peter Bouckaert of the rights group claimed that Hungary was keeping migrants and refugees “in pens like animals, out in the sun without food and water”.
Stoejberg told reporters that “we won’t be part of the distribution of the 160,000 asylum-seekers” and that Denmark already is receiving a large number of asylum-seekers.
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More than 250,000 people have reached Greece so far this year, the vast majority arriving on islands from the nearby Turkish coast.
