Migrants surge west despite central Europe’s war of words

Thousands of migrants flowed through the Balkans into Austria over the weekend, moving with relative ease across borders even as central European governments angrily accused each other of mishandling the refugee crisis.

Neighbouring states engaged in a series of angry exchanges, accusing each other of passing the buck and shirking their legal responsibilities, as pressure mounted on EU leaders to find a solution to the crisis when they meet on Wednesday.

Austria estimated more than 18,000 migrants entered the country at the weekend, some arriving from Slovenia but most coming from Hungary, where they were delivered by scores of buses and trains from Croatia.

Some 27,000 migrants came to Croatia in the past five days, arriving from Serbia after finding their intended path to western Europe blocked by a 175km fence Hungary erected at great cost on its southern border with Serbia.

To the embarrassment of Hungary's hard-line prime minister, Viktor Orban, Croatia helped the migrants bypass the barrier by transporting them to the Croatia-Hungary border, where a fence is only now being erected.

Smoothly

Although large numbers built up at some border crossings, for the most part the migrants were smoothly transferred on the frontier from Croatian to Hungarian buses, which took them directly to Austria.

At Letenye yesterday, dozens of Hungarian police and a handful of soldiers oversaw such a transfer, while medical staff and two ambulances waited to treat anyone with urgent health problems and local council workers filled roadside containers with hundreds of half-litre bags of drinking water.

When the buses arrived over the bridge dividing Hungary and Croatia, several soldiers took up position in nearby fields, as if ensuring no migrants made a break for it, in an operation that seemed stage-managed for Hungarian television.

Police sought to move non-Hungarian reporters away from the scene just before the buses arrived, saying they needed special permission to be in the border area, part of which is now under a state of emergency and patrolled by thousands of police officers and soldiers.

The bus drivers said they expected to take the migrants to Szentgotthard, a town 80km away on the Hungary-Austria border, to which buses had taken dozens of migrants from Letenye on Saturday.

The most tense border crossing in the region yesterday was probably Tovarnik, where hundreds of migrants surged on to a train heading for Hungary, with some hanging out of the doors and others trying to climb in through the windows.

After an intensely hot and dry summer in the Balkans, cooler and wetter weather is now on the way, and rain yesterday added to the misery and impatience of many migrants, and of the police monitoring them.

Registration

A large crowd also built up at Bregana, on the Slovenia-Croatia border, where Slovenian police pushed back people trying to break through, while periodically allowing groups to proceed to buses that took them to a nearby registration centre.

From there, most hope to move on to Germany via Austria, which are still accepting large numbers of migrants while trying to regulate the flow, to avoid the huge and almost unmanageable surges experienced in the past fortnight.

About 8,000 asylum seekers gathered in the Austrian town of Nickelsdorf on the border with Hungary, where Austrian soldiers guarded them as officials sought transport and places for them to sleep in the country’s overstretched asylum system.

German police said they expected two special trains, each carrying 500 people, to arrive from Austria yesterday, with five more scheduled for today.

Hungary, the most outspoken critic of what Mr Orban calls the “suicidal liberalism” of mainstream EU views on migration, blames Germany for encouraging illegal immigration by announcing an “open-door” policy for Syrians.

Hungary is now rushing to extend its fence across the border with Croatia, and may do the same along its frontier with Romania, angering both countries and deepening rancour in the region over the refugee crisis.

"Clearly, Croatia has the kind of government that thumbs its nose at European Union rules. Its immigrant-provision system collapsed in one day," said Hungary's foreign minister Peter Szijjarto, warning Budapest may now block Croatia's bid to join the 26-state Schengen zone of "borderless" travel in the EU.

He accused Croatia of “violating Hungary’s sovereignty” by sending buses and trains of migrants over the border without permission, with 40 Croatian police on one train reportedly being detained briefly by Hungarian counterparts.

Solidarity

“Croatia’s government has continuously lied in the face of Hungarians, Croatians, of the EU and its citizens,” Mr Szijjarto added. “What kind of European solidarity is this?”

Croatia’s prime minister, Zoran Milanovic, was unrepentant. Having said last week that his country was open to migrants, after a day of surging new arrivals his government shut roads leading to six of seven border crossings from Serbia and the army was put on alert.

Mr Milanovic said his country could not cope with the numbers but would strive to help migrants continue their westward voyage as smoothly as possible.

His provision of transport to the Hungarian border enraged Budapest by rendering redundant Mr Orban’s costly and controversial security fence.

“They will get food, water and medical help, and then they can move on. The European Union must know that Croatia will not become a migrant ‘hotspot’. We have hearts, but we also have heads,” Mr Milanovic said.

Under pressure in forthcoming general elections from the right-wing opposition, the liberal Mr Milanovic struck a much tougher note than usual, saying Croatia had “forced” Hungary to take migrants “and will keep doing it”.

"This problem is the result of Europe's incapacity to solve what should have been solved long ago, at the border between Turkey and Greece, " he said.

Mr Szijjarto also clashed with Romania’s foreign minister, Bogdan Aurescu, who called Hungary’s frantic fence-building an “autistic and unacceptable act”.

His Hungarian counterpart, referring to corruption charges facing Romanian leader Victor Ponta, replied: “We would expect more modesty from a foreign minister whose prime minister is currently facing trial.”

“We are a state that is more than 1,000 years old that throughout its history has had to defend not only itself but Europe as well, many times. That’s the way it’s going to be now, whether the Romanian foreign minister likes it or not,” Mr Szijjarto said.

Talks

Ahead of a crisis meeting of EU interior ministers on Tuesday and leaders on Wednesday, the foreign ministers of

Poland

, the

Czech Republic

,

Slovakia

and Hungary intend to meet for talks today.

They have been the strongest opponents of a German-led plan for all EU states to take fixed quotas of refugees.

“These are important meetings and key dates to solve these important questions both for the short term and for the future of Europe,” said Poland’s top diplomat Grzegorz Schetyna. “Each country must be able to decide how many migrants it can receive. Imposing a quota would be, in my view, against European principles,” he said.