But Orban also indicated on Friday that Faymann opposed the idea of opening up a transit corridor for migrants from the Hungarian-Croatian border towards Austria and Germany. Lots of people I know have gone to places where the people are collecting on the borders or here in Zagreb, said Janet Tuskan who also runs a charity shop in the capital.
Advertisement
But in New York late Thursday, Croatian Foreign Minister Vesna Pusic said tensions between both countries were “completely unnecessary”.
“The Finnish government strongly condemns last night’s racist protests against asylum seekers who had entered the country“, the government said in a statement.
Serbia claims to be powerless to control people passing through in Europe’s worst refugee crisis since the second World War.
Regional officials said contingency plans were being made to provide temporary accommodation for several thousand migrants, most of whom are from Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan, at a former Yugoslav military facility at Prevlaka, a peninsula 50km south of Dubrovnik, and at other locations in the area.
European Union President Donald Tusk says Europe might need a Border Guard to protect its outside borders from an “excessive wave” of migrants which could be a threat to its internal open borders system.
In Zagreb, the Croatian Prime Minister Zoran Milanović accused Serbia of working together with Hungary to send thousands of refugees “in an organized fashion only to its border with Croatia“.
“It’s an estimate based on the observations of officials on the ground, especially the federal police, the office for migration and refugees and [EU border protection agency] Frontex”, said a German interior ministry spokesman.
The huge influx started when Hungary sealed its border with Serbia to prevent refugees from using the country as a thoroughfare to western Europe.
State broadcaster YLE said the roughly 40 asylum-seekers were met by up to 40 protesters. Over the last week, more than 44,000 refugees have entered the country from non-EU Serbia.
Almost 4,000 people arrived on Wednesday and Thursday on Lesbos alone, making the most of the relatively calm weather before the Mediterranean is hit increasingly by storms as autumn progresses towards winter, making the crossing too risky for most refugees to attempt. Others are from Afghanistan, Pakistan and African countries including Sudan, Eritrea and Somalia.
A 3.5-metre high steel fence built along its boundaries with Serbia and the government’s tough clampdown on illegal migration have reduced the flood of refugees on the Serbian border to a trickle. Still, six of the eight Croatian crossings with Serbia will remain closed.
“This is the big question of the next few days and weeks, I am trying to seek supporters for this”, Orban said. For now, thousands of refugees arriving on the Croatian-Hungarian border are shipped every day to the Austrian border.
Hungary has also begun closing off the 41-kilometre (25.5-mile) stretch of its border with Croatia not covered by the uncrossable Drava river.
Hungary announced it had removed spools of razor wire from a section of its border with Slovenia, a barrier that breached European Union rules about unrestricted travel within much of its territory. He said the possibility of legal entry would be left open.
“The quota proposal is a typical example of the moral imperialism that Germany forces upon Europe”, Janos Lazar, Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s chief of staff, told reporters.
Advertisement
Mr Faymann had earlier likened Hungary’s tough handling of migrants to the policies of Nazi Germany – a comparison angrily dismissed by Hungary.
