EU, Balkan leaders commit to more shelter for migrants

BRUSSELS (AP) — At the end of a contentious summit, European and Balkan leaders committed early Monday to add capacity for receiving some 100,000 more migrants to ease the plight of the tens of thousands coming from Syria and beyond and marching across the Balkans toward the European Union’s heartland.

After lashing out at each other’s ineffective handling of the continent’s greatest immigration crisis since World War II, the 11 leaders agreed to slow the chaotic flow of people moving up from Greece and provide much more shelter as winter looms.

“This is one of the greatest litmus tests that Europe has ever faced,” said German Chancellor Angela Merkel.

At a hastily called emergency summit in Brussels, the leaders were especially looking to shore up Greece’s porous border and ensure the countries along the way would not simply ship the people through their territory and dump them at the border of the next northern neighbor.

“Waving them through has to be stopped and that is what is going to happen,” said EU Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker.

Nearly 250,000 migrants have passed through the Balkans since mid-September and the surge is not being deterred by either cold weather or colder waters off Greece. Croatia said 11,500 people crossed into the country Saturday, the highest in a single day since Hungary put up a fence and refugees started coming into Croatia in mid-September.

Slovenian Prime Minister Miro Cerar said his small Alpine nation was being overwhelmed by the refugees — with 60,000 arriving in the last 10 days — and was not receiving enough help from its EU partners.

He put the challenge in simple terms: if no fresh approach is forthcoming “in the next few days and weeks, I do believe that the European Union and Europe as a whole will start to fall apart.”

Serbian Prime Minister Aleksandar Vucic asked a fundamental question that the 28-nation bloc and non-EU nations like Serbia have been unable to answer since the migratory trek across the Mediterranean and through Turkey started in spring: “What we are going to do with hundreds of thousands of these people?”

Half a year later, there is no answer. Sunday’s came up with some solutions that did not address the fundamental issues at stake.

“The only way to restore order to this situation is to slow down the uncontrolled flow of these people,” Juncker said.

Many say the EU needs to get control of the refugee flow at the bloc’s external border between EU-member Greece and Turkey. Migration experts, however, say the flood of refugees won’t be halted until the world resolves the war in Syria, which is driving millions out of the country.

Croatian Prime Minister Zoran Milanovic asked of fellow EU nation Greece: “Why doesn’t Greece control its maritime half with Turkey?”

Greece, criticized for being ill-prepared as a first EU buffer against the migrants, decried the lack of EU solidarity.

“Till today, it was difficult to find a solution, because a series of countries adopt a stance ‘Not in my backyard,'” Tsipras said.

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, so often the target for building border fences that diverted the flow of refugees to other nations, simply said “Hungary is not on the route anymore, so we are just observers here.” Then he lashed into measures other EU nations had already taken, especially those belonging to the Schengen passport-free border zone.

“The no. 1 source of the crisis is that members of the European Union, and especially those who are members of Schengen treaty, are not able, or are not ready to keep their word,” Orban declared.

As the leaders bickered, those out in the field begged them to act quickly and more decisively.

At Slovenia’s overwhelmed Brezice refugee camp near the border with Croatia, a spokesman for the U.N. refugee agency urged leaders to come up with a system to register and screen newcomers when they first enter Europe, rather than in piecemeal attempts at borders along the way.

“But also very important is to help Syria’s neighboring countries, where there are around 4 million refugees,” said UNHCR spokesman Babar Baloch. “These people don’t need to take these risky journeys if there are legal pathways to come to Europe.”

Migrants now mainly travel across the water from Turkey to Greece, and then north to Macedonia and Serbia before entering Croatia and moving on to Slovenia and Austria. Most are aiming to get to Germany or Scandinavia.

In a reminder of the dangers, Greece’s coast guard said a woman and two young children drowned and seven other people were missing after their boat smashed into rocks on the island of Lesbos amid turbulent seas. Fifty-three others were rescued.

Syrian refugee Mohamed Alabdulameed was one of many forging into Slovenia after nearly three weeks on the road.

The 28-year-old said he initially hoped to make it to Britain but was changing plans after hearing how dangerous it had become to try and get across the English Channel. More than a dozen migrants have been killed in the last few months trying to hitchhike on trains or trucks going through the Channel Tunnel.

“I am asking myself ‘Why do they close the doors in front of us, especially the educated people who studied their language in other countries?'” he said. “That’s why I am really surprised and astonished at the same time.”

The number of people on the move across Europe was still in the tens of thousands.

Mahmoud Awad, a UNHCR field protection officer, said about 1,000 people passed through Serbia’s border town of Berkasovo and into Croatia overnight. In the Austrian border town of Spielfeld, 2,500 people spent the night in tents and 7,000 more were expected Sunday from Slovenia, the dpa news agency reported. In Germany’s southernmost state of Bavaria, the flow of asylum-seekers from Austria was steady at 3,000 to 6,000 people per day.

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Cohadzic reported from Brezice, Slovenia. Lorne Cook in Brussels, David Rising in Berlin; Ivana Bzganovic in Berkasovo, Serbia; Masha Macpherson in Brezice, Slovenia; and Jovana Gec in Belgrade, Serbia contributed to this story.