Austria said yesterday it planned to phase out the emergency measures it adopted when allowing thousands of refugees stranded against their will for days in Hungary to stream into Austria and Germany.
Many are fleeing war in the Middle East and hope to take refuge in Germany, Europe’s richest country, but the EU is divided over how to cope with the influx which has provoked both huge sympathy and anti-Muslim resentment among Europeans. Austrian Chancellor Werner Faymann said the decision, a day after the measures were put in place, followed “intensive talks” with German Chancellor Angela Merkel.
“We have always said this is an emergency situation in which we must act quickly and humanely. We have helped more than 12,000 people in an acute situation,” he said.
Thousands of migrants and refugees arrived at Budapest’s Keleti train station after travelling from Syria through the Balkans and Greece. Hungary laid on over 100 buses to the border on Saturday after Austria said it had agreed steps with Germany to waive the normal rules requiring refugees to apply for asylum wherever they enter the EU.
Others set off from the station to make the 170 km journey on foot. The platforms filled up again yesterday. Germany has said it expects 800,000 refugees and migrants this year and urged EU members to open their doors. But others say the focus should be on tackling the violence in the Middle East that has caused so many to flee.
“When rich Europe argues and tears itself apart over whether to accept 1,000, 10,000, 42,000 or 100,000 refugees, when Turkey already has two million, it is clear that we have a problem of perspective and identity,” EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini told Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera.
We’re happy – we’ll go to Germany
A dozen or so well-wishers offering chocolate and bananas greeted between 600 and 700 people, mostly Syrians, arriving on two early morning trains in Munich, the state capital of Bavaria. A total of 6,800 entered Germany on Saturday to be joined by an expected 5,000 yesterday. French far-right leader Marine Le Pen accused Germany of looking to lower wages and hire “slaves” .
Volunteers drove a convoy of around 140 cars and vans filled with food and water from Vienna into Hungary to collect exhausted migrants walking to the border.
However, a poll in French newspaper Aujourd’hui en France showed 55 per cent of French people opposed to softening rules on granting refugee status.
European leaders are due to expand their list of “safe” countries to which migrants looking for a better life can be returned. Refugees fleeing war, for instance in Syria, are expected to be given asylum. In Hungary, migrants boarded trains at Keleti station yesterday, following signs in Arabic directing people to trains to Hegyeshalom on the border with Austria. Volunteers handed out food and clothing.
Wrapped in blankets and sleeping bags, long lines of people, many carrying sleeping children, got off buses on the Hungarian side of the border and walked into Austria.
“We’re happy. We’ll go to Germany,” said a Syrian man who gave his name as Mohammed.
But on Hungary’s border with Serbia there were reports that people spent the night in the rain without food or shelter. Hungary, the main entry point for migrants into Europe’s borderless Schengen zone, has taken a hard line, vowing to seal its southern frontier with a new, high fence by September 15.
Hungarian officials have portrayed the crisis as a defence of Europe’s prosperity, identity and “Christian values” against an influx of mainly Muslim migrants.
At an EU foreign ministers’ meeting in Luxembourg on Saturday, the usual diplomatic conviviality unravelled as they failed to agree on any practical steps out of the crisis. Ministers are particularly at odds over proposals for country-by-country quotas to take in asylum seekers.
Meanwhile on the Greek Island of Lesbos, about 500 Afghans protesting at lengthy identification procedures scuffled with police.
A record 50,000 people hit Greek shores in July alone, and were ferried from islands unable to cope to the mainland by a government in financial crisis and keen to dispatch them into Macedonia.