A migrant runs after he enters the territory of Hungary by crossing the temporary protection fence along the Hungarian-Serbian border as a Hungarian police car approaches
German Chancellor Angela Merkel, reflecting on “a moving, in some parts breathtaking weekend behind us,” said yesterday that all EU countries could help to accommodate the human tide from the Middle East and Africa.
French President Francois Hollande announced that his country would welcome 24,000 refugees, and that he and Merkel had agreed on a mechanism to spread the migrant load across Europe.
But Hungary’s prime minister, Viktor Orban, said he wasn’t prepared to pitch in and questioned how any EU quota system for migrants could work.
Even as calm returned yesterday to the main border point between Austria and Hungary after more than 14,000 people used it over the weekend to enter Austria, Hungary’s leader hit back at EU counterparts who blamed his country for the chaos.
Orban mocked the European Union’s efforts to distribute migrants through a quota system and compared Hungary to a “black sheep” representing a voice of reason in the EU flock of countries.
Any EU migrant quota among the bloc’s 28 countries, makes no sense in a system where the free movement of people would make it impossible to enforce, he said.”As long as we are unable to defend Europe’s external borders, it makes no sense to talk about the fate of the immigrants.”
Austria’s Chancellor Werner and other EU leaders have blamed Orban for the chaos they say left Austria and Germany no choice but to essentially open their borders for thousands of migrants and refugees who complained of neglect and human rights violations in Hungary.
Most of those crossing into Austria over the weekend proceeded by train to Germany. Austrian officials said only about 90 people asked for asylum in Austria.
In a late night meeting that lasted until early yesterday in Berlin, the German government agreed to spend 6 billion euros (USD6.6 billion) next year to support the hundreds of thousands of new arrivals.
German officials recently predicted that up to 800,000 migrants will arrive by the end of the year, many of them refugees fleeing war and persecution in Syria, Iraq and Eritrea.
The government’s aid package will include improved housing, more federal police and language classes. Frank Jordans and George Jahn, Berlin, AP
Greek island overwhelmed by stranded migrants
It was supposed to be the first step on their journey to Western Europe. But now thousands of migrants are mired in despair, anger and frustration on the scenic Greek island of Lesbos. After perilous sea voyages from neighboring Turkey, they have been stranded for days, some for nearly two weeks, running out of money and desperate to get to mainland Greece and continue their route. The island of some 100,000 residents has been transformed by the sudden new population of some 20,000 refugees and migrants, mostly from Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan — and the strain is pushing authorities to the limit.
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