WE CAN’T COPE WITH THIS TIDE
Europe’s despairing leaders bring back border controls
EUROPE’S migrant crisis escalated last night as border controls were reintroduced and Germany admitted it could no longer cope with the influx.
Berlin had sought to criticise others – including Britain – for not taking in enough refugees after it announced it would no longer deport those coming from Syria.
But the EU’s passport-free travel zone was on the brink of collapse after Germany was forced to ask Italy to tighten border controls.
As tensions between European leaders unable to agree on how to handle the crisis simmered, Slovakia’s foreign minister Miroslav Lajcak said the Schengen Agreement removing border checks between 26 European countries has fallen apart.
Last night, as the numbers crossing into Germany reached nearly 150 per hour, it asked Italy to impose identification checks at Brennero, on the border with Austria, to ease the flow. An unprecedented surge of migrants has been trying
‘Locked in and left to suffocate’
to get to the country after Berlin last week began accepting asylum claims from Syrian refugees regardless of where they entered the EU.
It has caused chaos across eastern Europe as authorities have struggled to cope with the vast numbers who, as undocumented migrants, are theoretically barred from travelling across the EU. Figures released yesterday showed a record 104,460 asylum seekers arrived in Germany last month.
German officials last night insisted that its request to tighten border controls was a ‘temporary measure’. But Mr Lajcak said the Schengen Agreement had ‘de facto fallen apart’. ‘There are tens of thousands of people walking around here without anyone checking them,’ he said. ‘So, do we have Schengen, or don’t we?’
Stephan Mayer, a senior MP in German leader Angela Merkel’s party, said: ‘I do not think Schengen is over… But I certainly see the danger that if it is not possible in the long run to apply European asylum rules, that this directly erodes and endangers Schengen.’
In the Czech Republic, around 200 migrants trying to head to Germany from Hungary were hauled off trains in the southern region of Moravia. Police officers used permanent marker pens to number the refugees, who included dozens of children, before arresting them.
An estimated 3,000 people – mostly wanting to get to Germany – were camped at Keleti station in Budapest as officials said that under EU migration rules they were not allowed to travel. Hungary’s prime minister Viktor Orban will today meet EU chiefs to discuss the crisis.
In Austria, 24 Afghan refugees were rescued from an abandoned lorry. They had been locked in and left to suffocate.
In Greece, ferries arrived in Athens carrying more than 4,000 migrants from the holiday island of Kos. Refugees broke through a police cordon in new clashes on the Greek border with Macedonia.
A lorry from the Netherlands carrying 20 migrants, including two children, was intercepted by UK Border Force officers at Port of Tyne in North Shields. The migrants, from Albania and Syria, were detained and a 32-year- old Polish man was arrested. Stephen Glover and Comment – Page 16