Balkan countries on Friday announced a daily cap on migrant numbers, threatening to worsen a row between Austria and Greece over border restrictions, as the EU warned that failure of an upcoming migration summit with Turkey would spell "disaster". Slovenia, Croatia and Serbia said they would each restrict the number of migrants allowed to enter their territories to 580 per day.
The clampdown comes in response to Vienna last week introducing a daily cap of 80 asylum-seekers and saying it would only let 3,200 migrants pass through each day. The actions have sparked a diplomatic row with Greece, which blames Austria for encouraging the border restrictions along the Balkan migrant trail and creating a bottleneck on its soil. Austria, in return, accuses Greece of failing to properly police the bloc's external borders and allowing an excessively high number of migrants to continue their journey to western and northern Europe. The tighter controls have left thousands - including many children - stranded in Greece, as the bloc's worst migration crisis since World War II shows no sign of abating.
Close to 120,000 migrants have already arrived in Europe so far this year, according to the latest figures by the UN refugee agency. They add to the one million who made the perilous journey in 2015, mostly across the Aegean Sea from Turkey to the Greek islands. The influx has boosted populist parties across Europe, driven a wedge between the bloc's 28 member states and thrown into doubt the future of the cherished passport-free Schengen Zone vital for economic growth.
The EU told Austria last week limiting asylum claims was "plainly incompatible" with European Union laws and a European Commission legal opinion said it is illegal for countries to allow asylum seekers to transit through their territory. Slovenia said the new daily limit on migrant numbers was in line with a deal reached last week between police chiefs of Austria, Croatia, Serbia and Macedonia. Austria however insisted on Friday that no specific figure had been agreed upon at the police meeting in Zagreb on February 18.
"While the countries remain in close contact, each state decides its own border policies," interior ministry spokesman Karl-Heinz Grundboeck told AFP. The EU on Friday blasted countries' unilateral actions, instead pushing for a deal with Ankara to be discussed at a special summit in early March. Under the proposal - which was agreed last November but is yet to be implemented - Turkey would seal its borders to curb the flow and then fly refugees to Europe for resettlement in exchange for three billion euros ($3.3 billion).
"If there is no convergence and agreement (with Turkey) on March 7, we will be led to disaster," EU migration commissioner Dimitris Avramopoulos warned on Friday. EU president Donald Tusk will visit the Balkan states next week seeking to heal deep divisions over how to tame the migrant crisis, his office said Friday. The clampdown has left thousands of refugees stranded in Greece after neighbouring Macedonia denied all passage to Afghans and ramped up document controls for Syrians and Iraqis.
On Friday, there were some 4,000 people waiting to cross at the border post of Idomeni and some two dozen buses full of migrants parked a short distance away, local police said. Greek authorities have been regulating the flow of refugees to the border but hundreds have set out on foot for the frontier, determined to continue their journey northwards, despite being told they will be turned back. The government said efforts were under way to house migrants and refugees on the islands where they land by boat from neighbouring Turkey until the border situation is resolved.
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