BERLIN: Thousands of refugees were heading towards Hungary and the EU border on Monday, as the German chancellor, Angela Merkel, said the union’s member states must fairly share the burden of dealing with Europe’s biggest migration crisis since the second world war.
Speaking before talks in Berlin with the French president, François Hollande, Merkel said Europe needed to act together to deal with the chaotic scenes in Greece and the western Balkans as desperate migrants tried to reach the EU. “The current situation troubles us greatly,” she said.
Germany and France are to draft common proposals on immigration and security to deal with the worsening emergency. On Monday, Merkel said they could include building new registration centres in Greece and Italy to be run and staffed by the EU as a whole by the end of the year.
She said: “Time is running out. EU member states must share costs relating to this action.”
The two leaders also said that the EU must draw up a unified list of safe countries of origin. Asylum seekers arriving from these countries should be swiftly returned.
Berlin is increasingly determined to push a new system of mandatory quotas for refugees across the EU despite the issue being rejected by EU leaders in acrimonious scenes. The European commission is also to propose a new permanent system of emergency refugee-sharing across the union.
The Berlin summit came as long lines of migrants travelled on foot and by bus through southern Serbia, on the latest leg of their increasingly desperate journey to western Europe. The UN refugee agency UNHCR said more than 7,000 people, including women and children, had reached Serbia from Macedonia.
Many had spent three days on Greece’s northern border after Macedonia refused to allow them to enter. Last week Macedonian riot police tried to beat back crowds using stun grenades. On Saturday and Sunday the authorities relented and opened the border. They laid on trains and buses to ferry the refugees further north.
At the Serbian border crossing of Miratovac, refugees walked three miles to a reception centre in the southern town of Preševo. Most carried their belongings in rucksacks and men carried small children on their shoulders. In Preševo, they received medical aid, food and papers legalising their transit through the country.
I just want to cross to continue my journey,” Ahmed, from Syria, told Reuters, speaking on the Serbian border. He added: “My final destination is Germany, hopefully.”
