Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras (L) talks with United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi during their meeting at Maximos Mansion in Athens, Feb. 24, 2016.
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The International Organization for Migration (IOM) said more than one million migrants and refugees entered Europe past year.
Yiannis Mouzalas, Greece’s minister responsible for migration, said that there were now some 12,000 migrants stuck in the country, with hundreds more arriving every day.
VIENNA (AP) – Overwhelmed by a wave of refugees and what they call indecision in the European Union, Austria and its southern neighbors along the Balkan migrant route agreed to tighter border controls at a meeting Wednesday – and warned that sooner or later they will have to shut their doors entirely.
Greece, a main entry point for migrants and where thousands of Afghans have been held up at the border with Macedonia, angrily protested at being excluded from the ministerial meeting, underscoring the deep rifts within the EU.
“We fail to understand how it would fit into the decision-making progress agreed to by all EU member states under the treaties”, European Commission spokeswoman Natasha Bertaud told a news briefing.
Viktor Orban said Wednesday that those voting in favor of the proposal would be voting “in favor of Hungary’s independence and rejecting the mandatory quota plan”.
But German Chancellor Angela Merkel remains focused not on border controls but on Turkey, from where hundreds of thousands have crossed to Greece, as key to resolving Europe’s immigration crisis. “We need measures that can be implemented together with the Balkan states”. Around 90,000 people applied for asylum in Austria a year ago and a further 610,000 passed through the central European country.
Germany is counting on the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation mission and an EU-Turkey agreement to halt the human flow into Greece, but will rethink its policy in the absence of a “substantial reduction” in time for next month’s summit, Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere said.
So far only 598 people have been relocated from frontline states Greece and Italy, out of a planned 160,000. Greece, which has been managing the fall-out from a “bottleneck” of refugees on the Balkan route, was not invited to the conference. “We will either be in a union of common rules for all or everyone will do they please: we will not accept the latter”.
He said it was unacceptable for European Union partners to dump the burden of the crisis on Greece, forcing it to shoulder a weight way disproportionate to its size.
The EU says Austrian caps on refugee numbers are illegal.
Vienna has come under fire from Germany and Greece for imposing daily limits on the number of migrants that can apply for asylum or pass through to other countries.
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In addition, on 18 February, the heads of police services of Austria, Slovenia, Croatia, Serbia and the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia announced an agreement to jointly profile and register refugees and asylum-seekers at the border between the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia and Greece, as well as take a number of additional actions to manage the situation.
