About three, 000 people stay on the Greek side of the border near the village of Idomeni, together with about 1,000 Iranians & north Africans whom Macedonia is just not letting in. That may permit migrants to bypass the official registration process, & buy ferry tickets for Piraeus with out being screened by authorities on Lesbos – where most migrants crossing to Greece from Turkey arrive.—11:50 a.m. Tempers have flared at Greece’s main border crossing with Macedonia, where riot cops officers pushed back hundreds of migrants jostling to cross over, after Macedonia blocked access to people deemed to be economic migrants and never refugees.
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Instead of collective discrimination at borders, European Union member states Slovenia and Croatia and candidate countries Serbia and Macedonia should coordinate to ensure that everyone can present their asylum claims and that people are not trapped at borders amid worsening weather. He says Croatia has informed Serbia and Macedonia down the so-called migrant route, that “it is now obvious they will not be able to pass”.
On Macedonia’s southern border with Greece, crowds of people were backed up, denied entry.
Slovenia has started returning people it considers to be economic migrants from its borders, triggering a chain reaction along the Balkan migrant route.
Ranko Ostojic said Thursday Croatia also will no longer allow in migrants from war-free countries who wish to pass through on their way toward Western Europe.
Serbia sent around 200 migrants back to Macedonia, but Macedonia has not let them in, said spokesperson Melita Sunjic.
Greek police gathered at the border but the protest has been peaceful. They demanded to be allowed in, shouting slogans, such as “Freedom!”
Reckendorff said in Friday’s statement the man in September drove five Afghan refugees from the German city of Flensburg, south of Denmark’s border, to a Sweden-bound ferry in the northern Danish port town of Grenaa.
More than 4,000 refugees and migrants are flowing into Europe each day, he said.
The ramped-up border controls along the Balkans route came ahead of today’s extraordinary meeting of EU Justice and Home Affairs Ministers in Brussels – the first in the wake of the attacks on Paris on 13 November.
“We have to protect our state so we have implemented reciprocal measures towards those who in Croatia and Slovenia are considered unwelcome”, Vulin said.
“When you have numbers of people backing up at any one of these points, you have a problem with insufficient accommodation and that as we head into winter is a serious, serious worry”, Adrian Edwards, spokesman for UNHCR said, calling Balkan countries to expand their shelter capacity.
UNHCR’s Sunjic said that what the four countries are doing – selecting migrants on the basis of their nationality – does not square with worldwide rules on applying for refugee status.
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“We’ve received a request from Slovenia which had a group of citizens from countries that should be discouraged for migration, according to the Juncker Plan, they can not get worldwide protection – people from Morocco, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Algiers, Liberia, Sudan, Congo and Pakistan”.
