Drone footage of a vast column of refugees making their way through southern Slovenian farmland in a bid to seek asylum in Austria or Germany illustrates all too well the plight of those treading what’s become known as the Balkans Migration Route.
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A reported 11,500 refugees arrived in Croatia on Saturday alone with a further 60,000 refugees entering Slovenia in the last ten days.
“This is one of the greatest litmus tests that Europe has ever faced”, German Chancellor Angela Merkel told reporters after the summit.
“The immediate imperative is to provide shelter”, European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker said after the summit.
Almost 250,000 migrants have passed through the Balkans since mid-September, with the numbers showing little signs of slowing despite the cold weather and colder waters off Greece.
The leaders of 11 European Union and Balkan countries agreed on a 17-point plan that offered short-term fixes for the 1 million or more arrivals expected in the bloc this year.
“We should go down south and defend the borders of Greece if they are not able to do that”, said Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, who claimed he was only attending the meeting as an “observer” because Hungary is no longer on the migrant route since it tightened borders.
Migrants who are mainly trying to reach Germany or Scandinavia are now mainly travelling across the water from Turkey to Greece, and then north to Macedonia and Serbia before entering Croatia and moving on to Slovenia and Austria.
In a reminder of the dangers, Greece’s coast guard said a woman and two young children drowned, and seven other people were missing, after their boat smashed into rocks on the island of Lesbos amid turbulent seas.
Wearing her pale smile, fourteen-year-old Syrian girl Maria waved her right hand as she proceeded on Tuesday afternoon to board one of five Slovenian buses at a country road at the Slovenian tiny border village of Rigonce, along with a few 200 other refugees.
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There are still more than 5,000 migrants traveling through Serbia each day, with 7,000 entering Croatia on Monday, according to Mirjana Milenkovski, of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. The deal includes sending about 400 policemen to help Slovenia control its borders, emergency housing for as many as 100,000 refugees, a stepped-up registration system and bolstering border policing on the EU’s southeastern frontier.
