10 days to stop influx

Stark warning that EU could collapse as the crisis worsens

EUROPE has ten days to stop the massive influx of migrants entering the continent or face collapse, it was warned last night.

A million more migrants are expected to arrive in Europe this year but leaders are at loggerheads over how to deal with the crisis.

Germany alone is expecting 2.5million migrants to arrive in the next five years on top of the 1.1million that arrived in the last year.

European Commissioner for Migration Dimitris Avramopoulos yesterday said there needed to be a significant reduction in the numbers of people arriving on Europe’s shores immediately ‘or else there is risk the whole system will completely break down’.

At a meeting of interior minister in Brussels, he warned that unless a solution was found the EU would fall.

‘The unity of the union and human lives are at stake,’ he said. ‘The possibility of a humanitarian crisis on a large scale is very real. It is there.’

The crisis has worsened since Austria last Friday started only allowing 80 people claim asylum there each day.

The restriction has led to other countries along the migrant route rush to introduce

‘There have to be other measures’

similar measures, which has led to a backlog of migrants in Greece.

Greece has now threatened to block future EU agreements if other member states refuse to share the burden of the refugees.

German interior minister Thomas De Maziere said drastic steps would need to be considered if there was no progress in the next few days.

EU leaders, including David Cameron, will gather on March 7 to evaluate whether a deal that saw £2.4billion to Turkey handed to Turkey has done anything to cut the flow of migrants.

‘If a solution by March 7 is not possible, there have to be other European and coordinated measures,’ Mr De Maziere said.

Germany’s parliament yesterday agreed on tougher asylum rules aimed at curbing the record-influx of refugees.

The Bundestag lower house of parliament passed a package of measures such as a twoyear ban on allowing asylum seekers to bring their families to the country.

It also agreed on a new law to make it easier to deport foreigners who commit crimes, in the wake of assaults on women on New Year’s Eve that were widely blamed on migrants.

The German government confirmed that its departments were putting in plans based on 500,000 migrants coming to the country every year until 2020.

It means the country, which was last year overwhelmed with 1.1million people after Chancellor Angela Merkel threw open its doors to refugees, could see 3.6million arrivals by the end of 2020.

But Angela Merkel’s chief of staff, Peter Altmaier, stressed the numbers were internal estimates, adding: ‘ There are no reliable figures because we don’t know how things will develop.’

Police in the eastern city of Leipzig yesterday said a dead pig with Mrs Merkel’s nickname daubed on it had been found at the building site of a mosque. The animal’s corpse had the words ‘Mutti Merkel’ written on it in red letters.

Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orban yesterday hit out at Germany’s ‘rude and aggressive’ stance over the migrant crisis.

He has been a strident critic of an EU plan supported by Mrs Merkel to share out 160,000 refugees among member states.

The European Commission questioned the Hungarian prime minister’s decision to call a referendum on whether his country would accept an EU plan to share out refugees that he warned would ‘redraw Europe’s cultural and religious identity’.

Viktor Orban said the scheme to relocate 160,000 people was ‘nothing but an abuse of power’. The Hungarian government attempted to stop the introduction of the quota system in September but it was out-voted at a summit in Brussels.

‘We fail to understand how it would fit into the decision making process agreed by all EU member states,’ said spokesman Natasha Bertraud.

ASYLUM applications to the UK have gone up by 20 per cent in a year, an Office for National Statistics immigration report has revealed.

There were 38,878 asylum seekers who asked for refugee status in 2015, up from 32,344 in 2014.

Of these, 2,846 were from Syria, up by 493 on 2014 figures.

The greatest number of asylum seekers last year, 3,756, came from Eritrea.