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 More than 100,000 migrants, many of them refugees from conflicts
in the Middle East and Africa, have entered Hungary, part of
Europe’s Schengen zone of passport-free travel, this year en route
to the more affluent countries of western and northern Europe.
The influx ticked up on Monday to its highest daily rate this year –
2,093 – as many race to beat a fence that Hungary is building on its
175-km (110-mile) border with Serbia to keep them out.
A Reuters reporter saw hundreds stream unhindered into Hungary from
Serbia on Tuesday, part of a larger movement in recent weeks whisked
north by boat and bus as cash-strapped governments in Greece,
Macedonia and Serbia try to move them on as fast as they can.
“We have skills, we can survive anywhere,” 30-year-old Hassan, an IT
engineer from Syria, said after walking across the border into
Hungary. “We don’t just come to Europe to eat and sleep. We’re
looking for safety. It’s better to walk across half of Europe than
to stay in Syria.”
 A record 50,000, many of them Syrians, reached Greek shores by boat
from Turkey in July alone. Greece, embroiled in a debilitating
economic crisis, is ferrying them from overwhelmed islands to the
mainland, from where they head north to Macedonia and points beyond.
Macedonia tried to keep them out last week with razor-wire and stun
grenades, but gave up in the face of huge and determined crowds. The
United Nations refugee agency, UNHCR, said it expected the influx
into Macedonia to continue at a rate of 3,000 per day for months.
Some 8,000 were estimated to be in Serbia, many spending the night
in city parks.
Belgrade's Lasta bus company said it increased its daily departures
to the northern town of Subotica from seven to 24. “In the coming
days we may expect an increase,” the company told Reuters in an
email.
Hungarian authorities are rolling out a low, barbed-wire barrier
along the border with Serbia, while construction crews race to
complete a more substantial 3.5-metre-high fence.
"EUROPE HAS FAILED"
Critics point out that the vast majority of migrants who enter
Hungary do not linger, determined to reach the likes of Austria,
Germany and Sweden where they join up with relatives and friends in
search of work and security.
But the Hungarian government under right-wing Prime Minister Viktor
Orban has taken a harder line than other EU states, saying such an
influx carries risks of terrorism, crime and unemployment. He says
the EU has failed to offer a coherent solution, and also faces
pressure at home from far-right opponents.
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Orban’s chief of staff, Janos Lazar, said Hungary should be given
more money by the EU. The European Commission, the EU’s executive
arm, has pledged nearly 8 million euros in aid and various other
measures. But Lazar told the daily Magyar Hirlap newspaper it was
not enough.
“The European Union distributes border protection funds in a
humiliating way. Old member states have nicked the money from new
members,” he was quoted as saying.
“If we do not take meaningful steps, we will become a lifeboat that
sinks beneath the weight of those clinging onto it," Lazar said in
what appeared to be a reference to the deaths of over 2,000 migrants
this year trying to reach Europe on overcrowded boats across the
Mediterranean.
Not since the wars of Yugoslavia’s collapse in the 1990s has the
cash-strapped western Balkans seen such large movements of people.
Germany says it expects a record 800,000 asylum-seekers to arrive
this year, in a crisis overwhelming authorities in Europe from the
Greek islands to the French port of Calais.
The European Commission has made clear its disapproval of the
Hungarian fence, with its Cold War echoes in ex-Communist eastern
Europe, but Hungary faces no sanction for building it.
On Monday, Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker criticized
bickering EU governments for “finger pointing” instead of
confronting the migrant crisis with viable measures.
His deputy, Frans Timmermans, told Europe 1 radio on Tuesday that
“Europe has failed. Europe has to get moving.”
“So far, many member states have thought they can go it alone. That
doesn’t work. We have to do it together.”
(Additional reporting by Reuters Television, Fatos Bytyci in
PRESEVO, Serbia, Aleksandar Vasovic in BELGRADE, Alastair MacDonald
in BRUSSELS, Stephanie Nebehay in GENEVA, Krisztina Than in
BUDAPEST; Writing by Matt Robinson; Editing by Giles Elgood)
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