The European Commission yesterday announced an extraordinary mini-summit of EU and Balkan leaders on Sunday to deal with the refugee crisis.
A statement from European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker’s office said “there is a need for much greater cooperation, more extensive consultation and immediate operational action.”
Nations invited to attend are EU members Austria, Bulgaria, Croatia, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Romania and Slovenia, as well as non-EU countries Macedonia and Serbia.
Photo: AP
The statement from Juncker’s office said the extraordinary meeting of heads of state and government is necessary because of “the unfolding emergency in the countries along the Western Balkans migratory route.”
“The objective of the meeting will be to agree common operational conclusions which could be immediately implemented,” the commission’s statement said.
It said officials from the UN High Commissioner for Refugees have also been invited to attend, as well as officials from the union’s own border protection agency and asylum office.
In Slovenia, parliament yesterday passed legislation that will give the army more power to help police guarding the state border as thousands of migrants and refugees flood in from Croatia after Hungary sealed off its border.
The new legislation will enable the soldiers to control the border when there are no police present. The army began helping guard the border on Monday, but so far only when police were present.
More than 20,000 refugees and migrants have arrived in Slovenia since Saturday morning to pass through to Austria. At least 6,000 spent the last night in Slovenia, which provided them with shelter in refugee centers.
Slovenian Prime Minister Miro Cerar told reporters before the vote in parliament that the government “will officially ask the EU ... for police backup and for financial help.”
Opposition parties said the government should follow Hungary and put up a fence on Slovenia’s border with Croatia to prevent migrants entering the country.
An official from the Ministry of the Interior said the possibility “of safeguarding border crossings with physical obstacles” cannot be excluded if the flow of refugees and migrants escalates.
Attempts by Slovenia to stem the flow since Hungary sealed its border with Croatia on Friday have triggered a knock-on effect through the Balkans, with thousands held up at border crossings. At least 12,100 refugees and migrants are in Serbia, the prime minister said on Tuesday. About 6,000 had entered Austria from Slovenia on Tuesday, a police spokesman in Styria Province said.
A German newspaper reported that Berlin may use army transport planes to send asylum seekers who have had their applications rejected to their home countries in an attempt to speed up deportations and ease a mounting refugee crisis.
Citing regional government sources, Bild daily said that the federal and 16 state governments were considering accelerating asylum processing, not telling individuals in advance that they would be deported and using the army to help.
A German government source said no action plan had been agreed and a range of options were on the table.
Bild reported that the number of new asylum applications far outnumbered deportations. By the end of last month, 193,500 people were registered as having no valid reason to claim asylum, it said.
From the start of the year to August, Germany’s states had deported 11,522 people, compared with 10,884 people in the whole of last year, Bild said.
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