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Sweden PM defends temporary border controls

While ministers argue, civil servants at the Federal Office for Migration and Refugees have warned of serious flaws in procedures – with asylum-seekers being accepted as Syrians without being asked for any proof of nationality.

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More than 810,000 people have crossed the Mediterranean this year, and over 200,000 in October alone.

Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto said: “The Dublin system is dead”.

The global Organisation for Migration said around 31,000 refugees or other migrants had entered Greece over the previous week, a 38% drop from a week earlier. Most of these migrants headed to Germany and other more prosperous western European countries, where they are seeking to settle permanently.

Zuma also hit out at a few European countries that “have taken a fortress approach” to migration.

“This includes, first and foremost, restoring external border control. We must hurry, but without panic”.

Sweden required an update of the system, which makes European travel like trips between the US states and is routinely hailed by European Union pioneers as one of the best accomplishments of a continent without dividers.

The Netherlands is also looking at shifting funds from development assistance to refugees inside the country. There was no comment from authorities in Greece, where a general strike was taking place Thursday.

The European Union and Ethiopia have cut a deal to tackle migration and human smuggling.

The Commission proposed to the leaders that Ankara be offered a 3-billion euro ($4.54 billion) “refugee grant facility” for the next two years to help Turkey accommodate the more than two million Syrians it is hosting.

This year, Sweden has received more refugees than any other European country, with 112,000 appeals for asylum so far this year and 190,000 asylum seekers anticipated for the year as a whole.

According to Tobias Åkerman, a spokesman, the tents are meant to keep people warm as they wait to be registered.

Turkey’s state-run agency says seven children are among the 14 migrants who drowned when their boat sank off the northern Turkish Aegean coast. As you said, these expire in 10 days. “There is nothing that’s been excluded from the agenda, but we should do it at the right time and with the right conditions”, he said. “We expect the same reaction from Slovenia, they will move it”. The small Alpine nation says it is overwhelmed by the refugee surge.

The Austrian federal government Friday confirmed it would construct a wire mesh fence at the Spielfeld migrant crossing site on the Slovenian border.

Slovenia had said it was avoiding contested border areas unresolved from the 1990s breakup of Yugoslavia. This is remarkable because Sweden’s only land borders are with Norway and Finland, far to the north and do not provide easy access to the country.

Sweden is imposing temporary border controls to stem a record inflow of refugees as the Nordic nation pleads with the rest of Europe to help deal with the wave of people fleeing war in the Middle East.

The leader of Sweden – with the highest number of migrants per capita in Europe – defended his country’s move on border controls. Coastguards said they had rescued 27 survivors.

The latest poll put the anti-immigrant Sweden Democrats, branded “neo-fascist” by the prime minister Stefan Löfven, as the country’s largest party, more than doubling its share to 26.8 per cent.

“We are now considering anything new like that at the present moment”, Prime Minister Erna Solberg said on the sidelines of Thursday’s summit between European Union and African leaders in Malta.

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Police also identified between 500 and 600 refugees who wished to seek asylum in Sweden.

A group of migrants off an incoming train are escorted by Swedish police officers as they gather on the platform at the Swedish end of the bridge between Sweden and Denmark in Malmo Sweden. Swedish police are urging people traveling to and from neighbori