“Some 1,500 people, mostly from Pakistan, Iran and Morocco, have been Greece%E2%80%99s+Border+with+Macedonia#sthash.IxOUPTgm.dpuf” stranded near the Greek border town of Idomeni for more than a week, demanding to cross into Macedonia en route to western and northern Europe. Scuffles have broken out between migrants and refugees at Greece’s northern border with Macedonia, after hundreds of people not being allowed to cross the border blockaded the crossing in protest.
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A group of migrants using wood and metal and empty barrels to make a roadblock 120 meters back from the Greek and Macedonian border are preventing all Syrian, Afghan and Iraqi refugees from passing into the area.
Chris Morris reports from Idomeni.
Themigrantsattempted to cross theborderfromGreecethrough a creek at a point not closed by thefencebefore Macedonian police pushed them back according to AP.
The European Commission confirmed Thursday that it received these three requests from Athens.
“The moment of truth will be the December European Council”, the official said, referring to the next meeting of EU leaders in Brussels in two weeks’ time. Earlier on Wednesday, Greek Deputy Immigration Minister Ioannis Mouzalas said Macedonia’s decision to stop some people at the border was against the law. Exhausted of waiting, thousands of refugees then broke through a Greek police cordon, surging to the Macedonian border, which immediately closed again.
The victim, believed to be a Moroccan citizens, died when he climbed “onto a carriage of a stationary train near the border and touching a high-tension cable overhead”, local police spokesman Petros Tanos has been quoted as telling AFP.
“We don’t even think that Greece could ever be out of Schengen”.
In a step forward Thursday, the European Union border control agency, Frontex, said it had agreed with Greece to expand its activities to the border with Macedonia, where it will assist with registering migrants, beginning next week.
The Luxembourg minister who will chair Friday’s meeting in Brussels has told Reuters that he opposed suggestions from some other European Union member states that Greece be suspended from the bloc’s Schengen zone of passport-free travel for failing to secure its section of the EU’s external border. But Greece’s neighbors could reintroduce border controls for Greek people if the country were deemed to be “seriously neglecting its obligations”.
He assured that the problems at Idomeni would be resolved within four to five days, adding that “there will be no caging migratory flows”.
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Allies have grown increasingly impatient with Greek failures to even register and identify most of those arriving, let alone accommodate them and handle asylum requests as European Union rules dictate and that frustration has mounted sharply amid accusations that Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras’s radical leftist-led coalition has refused to accept European Union help, notably foreign border guards.
