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 A day before deeply divided European Union ministers tackle the
migrant crisis, the U.N. refugee agency also called on every member
state to take in a share of asylum-seekers under a Brussels plan
which some countries are fiercely resisting.
Berlin announced that the temporary measure would be taken first on
the southern frontier with Austria, where migrant arrivals have
soared since Chancellor Angela Merkel effectively opened German
borders to refugees a week ago.
"The aim of these measures is to limit the current inflows to
Germany and to return to orderly procedures when people enter the
country," said German Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere.
Open borders among the European countries which signed the Schengen
Treaty are a crucial part of the EU project, but controls can be
re-introduced, provided they are only temporary.
"The free movement of people under Schengen is a unique symbol of
European integration," the EU's executive Commission said in a
statement. "However, the other side of the coin is a better joint
management of our external borders and more solidarity in coping
with the refugee crisis."
At an emergency meeting on Monday, interior ministers from the EU's
28 member states will discuss Commission proposals to redistribute
about 160,000 asylum seekers across the bloc.
"We need swift progress on the Commission's proposals now," the
Commission said in a statement issued as tens of thousands of people
fleeing war and poverty in Syria and other parts of the Middle East,
Asia and Africa made their way north.
EU envoys meeting on Sunday evening in Brussels failed to break the
deadlock, with some eastern states still refusing to accept binding
quotas of refugees. They argue the plan will draw more people to
Europe and disrupt their homogeneous societies.
 Amid the political bickering among European governments, the crisis
claimed yet more lives. On Sunday 34 refugees, almost half of them
babies and children, drowned off a Greek island when their boat
sank, the coast guard said.
LIMIT OF ABILITY
Germany, Europe's largest and richest economy, has become a magnet
for migrants making journeys by sea and land, often via Turkey and
the Greek islands, and then onwards through the Balkans, Hungary and
Austria. Police said around 13,000 arrived in the southern German
city of Munich alone on Saturday, and another 3,000 on Sunday
morning.
Now Germany has joined smaller and poorer countries such as Greece
and Hungary that are struggling to manage the huge flow of desperate
people.
As trains for Germany were stopped, groups of refugees and migrants
camped out in an underground carpark in the Austrian city of
Salzburg, near the border. Traffic backed up along one of the
highways between the two countries.
Austrian news agency APA quoted Chancellor Werner Faymann as saying
that Vienna would not introduce additional border controls for now
but that the effect of Germany's decision on Austria was hard to
predict.
Trains from Austria to Germany would be stopped until 5:00 a.m.
(0300 GMT) on Monday, the interior minister of the state of Bavaria
said. A Reuters photographer also saw a German police checkpoint on
one of the Austrian roads into Germany.
German police on the border with Austria said they had detained 22
smugglers since Berlin implemented border controls. Forty-four
migrants also were rounded up and taken by bus to registration
centers, a police spokesman said.
Germany made clear it wanted EU partners to share the burden of
welcoming thousands of refugees.
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"It's true: the European lack of action in the refugee crisis is now
pushing even Germany to the limit of its ability," Economy Minister
Sigmar Gabriel, who is also vice-chancellor, told the website of Der
Tagesspiegel newspaper.
With large numbers of migrants stuck in squalid and chaotic
conditions on European borders, or trudging along the side of
motorways, Merkel last weekend stopped enforcing the EU's "Dublin"
rules under which asylum seekers should register in whichever member
state they first arrive in.
De Maiziere defended Merkel's decision but insisted the Dublin rules
were still valid. "We need to quickly return to orderly procedures
now," he added. "We can't allow refugees to freely choose where they
want to stay - that's not the case anywhere in the world."
Most asylum seekers are refusing to stay in the poorer southern
European countries where they arrive, such as Greece, and are
instead making their way to Germany or Sweden where they anticipate
a warmer welcome. Many Germans have greeted the arrivals with cheers
and volunteers are flooding in to help.
CENTRAL EUROPE WARYCentral European countries are hostile to
European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker's plan for
spreading refugees around the bloc, and reject any suggestion of
compulsory quotas.
"We are helping, we are ready to help, but on a voluntary basis,"
Czech Prime Minister Bohuslav Sobotka said on Sunday. "The quotas
won’t work."
In neighboring Slovakia, Interior Minister Robert Kalinak said he
would try to block quotas. "They don't make any sense ... and don't
solve the crisis in any way," he said in a TV interview.
Poland said it might accept more migrants, but only if the EU
secures its external borders; separates those who need help from
economic migrants; and allows Warsaw a say in screening them from
the point of security.
Meanwhile, the migrants continued to risk all on their journeys. The
Greek coastguard said the 34 drowned off the island of Farmakonisi,
almost certainly the largest death toll in those waters since the
migrant crisis began.
In the space of 90 minutes, a Reuters photographer saw 10 dinghies
packed with refugees arriving from Turkey on the Greek island of
Lesbos.
Further up the refugee route, 8,500 migrants entered Macedonia from
Greece between Saturday evening and Sunday afternoon, the UNHCR
said.
Hungarian state TV M1 reported that 8,000 to 10,000 migrants had
crossed into Austria at Hegyeshalom by 6 p.m. and several thousand
more were expected by the end of the day.
(Additional reporting by Jens Hack, Michael Shields, Tom Miles,
Michele Kambas, Robert Muller, Bardh Krasniqi Alkis Konstantinidis,
Francois Murphy, Sandor Peto, Marcin Goettig, Tatiana Jancarikova
and Michael Dalder; Writing by David Stamp; Editing by William
Hardy, Dominic Evans and Paul Simao)
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