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European Leaders Pledge to Take In More Migrants Migrants Flow Into Hungary as Some in Europe Pledge Help
(about 5 hours later)
LONDON — The leaders of France, Britain and Germany on Monday moved to offer new assistance to the stream of migrants flowing through Europe, an influx that is severely testing the Continent’s ability to respond in a concerted way to a crisis that does not seem close to an end. ROSZKE, Hungary — Fraying tensions snapped along Hungary’s southern border on Monday as thousands more migrants staggered into the country from Serbia while European leaders scrambled to figure out what to do with them and how to stanch the flow.
President François Hollande of France announced on Monday that his country would take in 24,000 asylum seekers over two years, Britain said it would take in 20,000 refugees from Syria, and Chancellor Angela Merkel said Germany would set aside 6 billion euros, about $6.7 billion, to deal with the crisis. In a trash-strewn camp a few hundred yards north of the border, more than 1,000 people waited for promised buses to take them to a nearby relocation center — the next stop, they hoped, on their long journey to Western Europe from Syria, Afghanistan and other nations.
But even as the leaders offered the aid, there were signs of tension along the migrant trail as newcomers tried to follow the path of those who had successfully reached Germany and other countries offering at least temporary asylum. About 200 angry people broke free, made their way to the country’s main north-south motorway and began walking toward Budapest, forcing the authorities to close the artery.
In the southern Hungarian town of Roszke, near the border with Serbia, hundreds of refugees who had managed to cross into Hungary were herded into a trash-strewn field to wait, some for two days, to be transported to so-called reception camps. Some had been waiting in Roszke for more than two days, with temperatures falling into the 40s overnight. Still more arrived, in bedraggled clusters of 10 or 20, along the railroad tracks that sliced a gap in the razor-wire fence Hungary is constructing along the 108-mile Serb border.
Several hundred migrants formed into a marching group and tried to push their way out of the makeshift camp, chanting “Freedom! Freedom!” before they eventually retreated when the police warned they could be arrested. “At night, it is so cold,” said Mahmoud Alatrash, 29. “I think we will never leave. I think we will die here.”
“It’s a big mess, as you can see,” said Balazs Szalai, a volunteer with a refugee assistance group. With pressure building on European countries to accept more of the migrants — and many countries, notably Hungary, resisting that pressure — President François Hollande of France announced on Monday that his country would take in 24,000 asylum seekers over two years.
In Spain, a day after the police clashed with migrants at a detention center in the eastern city of Valencia, the regional government called on the authorities to investigate the episode, including reports that the police had fired rubber bullets to regain control of the center. In Britain, Prime Minister David Cameron said his country would accept 20,000 refugees from Syria. In Germany, which has been accepting by far the largest number of arrivals, Chancellor Angela Merkel vowed to set aside $6.7 billion to deal with the crisis.
And in Greece, the authorities said they had requested European Union aid to help the country cope with the surge in the number of migrants arriving each day, often on rickety boats from Turkey. The numbers those European nations have agreed to accept are much smaller than the numbers of those who have entered the continent, and who continue to arrive. And many countries, especially in Eastern Europe, are balking at accepting more than a token number.
Mr. Hollande said a plan that was expected to be presented on Wednesday by the European Commission, the union’s executive arm, would redistribute 120,000 people across the bloc over the next two years. Mr. Hollande said a plan was expected to be presented on Wednesday by the European Commission, the union’s executive arm, that would redistribute 120,000 people across the 28-nation bloc over the next two years.
“It is the duty of France, where the right to asylum is entirely part of its soul, of its flesh,” said Mr. Hollande, who added that the country was ready to host an international conference on the matter and that it was expecting a total of 60,000 asylum requests for 2015. “It is the duty of France, where the right to asylum is entirely part of its soul, of its flesh,” Mr. Hollande said.
The United Nations refugee agency has said that more than 310,000 people have crossed the Mediterranean to reach Europe since the beginning of the year, prompting Mr. Hollande to say that the situation was “dramatic” and “serious,” but that it could and would be brought under control. The European Union, he said, needed to create “hot spot” reception centers at those borders under the greatest onslaught — in Greece, Italy and Hungary — to register new arrivals and turn back those who do not meet the requirements for asylum.
The seemingly disparate projections of the numbers of migrants cited by different governments underlined the confusion and difficulty that the European Union has found in trying to come up with a coherent policy for the fast-moving situation. Mr. Cameron said Monday that Britain would accept up to 20,000 Syrian refugees, but they would most likely be limited to those who apply for asylum from camps in Jordan, Lebanon and Turkey. The British government is wary of giving migrants any incentive to make the dangerous journey into Europe, officials said, and did not wish to favor more well-to-do refugees who could afford the trip.
The European Union needs to provide “massive humanitarian aid” to countries like Jordan and Lebanon that have taken in millions of Syrian refugees, Mr. Hollande said. He said that he would go to Lebanon and visit a refugee camp next month. Challenged by Harriet Harman, acting leader of the opposition Labour Party, to say how many would be admitted this year, officials declined to give a specific target.
Mr. Hollande added that the European Union needed to create “hot spot” reception centers in countries like Greece, Hungary and Italy to identify and register migrants as they arrived in the European Union and to turn back those who do not fulfill the requirements for asylum. Several other British lawmakers criticized the announcement, with some calling for the number to be increased. “The offer of 20,000 refugees over five years amounts to just 12 refugees a day, which falls pitifully short of what is needed and of what people in this country deserve and expect,” said Caroline Lucas, a lawmaker for the Green Party.
It was not clear how such centers would operate. In Germany, Ms. Merkel said that “what we are experiencing now is something that will occupy and change our country in coming years.”
Mr. Hollande emphasized that Ms. Merkel and he were in agreement on solutions to the refugee crisis, even announcing that France was ready to take in 1,000 refugees from those now streaming into Germany as a show of solidarity. “We want that the change is positive, and we believe we can accomplish that,” she added.
In Britain, Prime Minister David Cameron detailed his government’s plan to accept thousands more refugees from Syria, after a public and political uproar over his initial reaction to the crisis. Hungary, which has taken a much harder line than most European nations, continued to reject demands that all countries accept quotas.
Mr. Cameron said on Monday that he would accept up to 20,000 Syrian refugees in Britain, but that they would most likely be limited to asylum seekers from camps in Jordan, Lebanon and Turkey, rather than in Europe. Prime Minister Viktor Orban has repeatedly said that Hungary has the right to protect its Christian traditions by refusing to accept large numbers of Muslims, and that many of the arrivals making their way to Germany and other prosperous nations did not deserve asylum.
The British government has indicated that it does not want to add incentives, or “pull factors,” that would encourage more migrants to risk the passage to Europe, nor to favor those migrants who could afford to pay people smugglers over those who are in the regional camps. “We have to face the reality that these people do not simply want refugee status,” he told a gathering of diplomats on Monday. “They are really after the German way of life.”
With people inside and outside Mr. Cameron’s governing Conservative Party critical of the European Union, Britain will most likely continue to reject the idea of mandatory quotas to distribute migrants and asylum seekers already in Europe across member states. Yet strains were beginning to show in the Hungarian government. On Monday, Csaba Hende, Hungary’s defense minister, submitted his resignation following a national security meeting, and Mr. Orban accepted it, the state news agency reported.
Mr. Cameron announced last week that Britain would add an additional 100 million pounds, about $150 million, to the £900 million it already provides for humanitarian aid to displaced Syrians. Mr. Hende had been responsible, along with the minister of the interior, for construction of the border fence. Mr. Orban had asked that it be completed by the end of August, but only a first stage, a line of razor wire along the ground, had been completed by then, with the bulk of the 13-foot barrier still being built. Those arriving Monday in Roszke could listen, as they walked along the rail tracks through the gap in the fence, to the clang of a pile driver sinking metal poles into the loamy ground just a few hundred yards away.
Britain will also take some of the funds that it usually sends abroad and use that money to house and help Syrians in their first year in Britain, the chancellor of the Exchequer, George Osborne, said on Sunday. He refused to confirm a specific figure that would be spent on the migrants. Already this year alone, more than 150,000 migrants have requested asylum in Hungary. The latest figures from the government show that the largest number, 53,467, came from Syria, with 41,094 from Afghanistan, 24,554 from Kosovo and the rest from Iraq, Pakistan, Eritrea and other troubled nations.
In Austria, migrants continued to arrive, despite an announcement by Chancellor Werner Faymann on Sunday that the country planned to limit the number it would allow in. The opening of a new relocation camp in Roszke on Sunday — not far from the muddy field where the latest arrivals were being held — is only the first step in a coming crackdown on illegal migration, Mr. Orban promised.
The police along Austria’s eastern border with Hungary, where thousands of migrants were stranded last week before being allowed to cross, were increasing checks in the area in an effort to find human traffickers, but they allowed migrants entry, Reuters reported. A series of revisions to Hungary’s refugee laws, set to take effect Sept. 15, will give the authorities greater powers to contain the flow and punish those who contribute to it.
Germany, which is expected to receive 800,000 migrants this year, announced its €6 billion financial commitment along with other plans to absorb the huge influx. One package of revisions, passed by the Hungarian Parliament on Friday, allows for the building of closed camps along the border to rule quickly on whether new arrivals qualify for refugee status — a plan that seemed similar to Mr. Hollande’s call for “hot spot” centers.
According to official German figures, about 40 percent of those who have applied for asylum are from the western Balkans and are unlikely to have their applications accepted. About 49 percent of the migrants coming to Europe by sea this year have been from Syria, the United Nations relief agency said, but there are no reliable figures for those coming by land. More revisions, expected to be passed this week, would give the police much greater authority, including the right to enter private homes if they suspect migrants are hiding there, and would authorize the Hungarian military to help protect the border.
“What we are experiencing now is something that will occupy and change our country in coming years,” Ms. Merkel said on Monday after a meeting of government leaders on possible measures to cope with the influx. “We want that the change is positive, and we believe we can accomplish that.” “It is Hungary’s primary interest to protect its border,” Mr. Orban said Monday. “For this, we need a physical point, a physical line, a construction, which can be guarded by the army, the police and any other official sent to the border,”
In addition to the increased funding, the German government plans to pass several laws in the coming month aimed at speeding the processing of applications and at bolstering efforts to get newcomers into jobs or schools. Hungary was not the only flash point on Monday. In Spain, a day after the police clashed with migrants at a detention center in the eastern city of Valencia, the regional government called on the authorities to investigate the episode, including reports that the police had fired rubber bullets to regain control.
Germany and France are pressing for a quota system by which European Union countries would accept migrants according to their populations and relative wealth. In Denmark, the police stopped a Copenhagen-bound train carrying about 100 migrants. Passengers with valid passports and visas were shifted to another train while the migrants were held.
The quota system has been steadfastly rejected by many countries, which argue that immigration is a matter of national policy and sovereignty and should not be determined by Brussels. The move was in reaction to an influx of migrants that came from Hungary over the weekend, a police official said. The first few dozen agreed to board buses to reception centers where they were to be fed and given beds and access to showers while they went through registration.
On Monday, the Hungarian prime minister, Viktor Orban, criticized the bloc’s proposals for quotas, saying that Hungary was a “black sheep” and would not follow the “flock” of other European Union countries. “During registration, you will be interviewed and you will be asked your desires — if you want to seek asylum or not,” an officer told them.
Mr. Orban told a group of Hungarian diplomats that the proposed redistribution system made no sense given the bloc’s border-free system, which, he said, would make a quota system impossible to enforce. The group — which was on its way to Norway and Sweden — included Syrians, Afghans, Iraqis and Iranians who had made their way over the weekend from Budapest’s Keleti train station.
“How is this going to work?” he asked. “Has anyone thought this through?” “I don’t want to stay here,” said Nasser Taha, 21, from Tripoli, Libya. “I have no language, no work, no people.”
The Hungarian Parliament approved a package of emergency laws last Friday intended to deal with the migration crisis. The new measures include jail terms for people who try to cross the border illegally and camps set up on the border with Serbia. Lawmakers are set to approve new provisions this week that would add the army to the existing police force at the border. At the camp near Roszke, migrants waited Monday for bus rides to the nearby processing center where they would be registered and then sent north. Angry groups, weary of the delays, marched on the line of police blocking their exit, chanting “Freedom! Freedom!” They were repeatedly pushed back.
Tuzson Bence, a spokesman for the governing Fidesz party, told state television on Monday that “tolerance will last until the 15th,” as he stood in front of the razor-wire fence on the border with Serbia. Starting from next week, he said, people who cannot enter the country legally as migrants or asylum seekers would be turned away at border crossings. Taha Shaben, 28, who said he fled Syria when his family’s textile factory was bombed, scowled at those trying to muscle their way through.
“I am Syrian, you know,” he said. “A real Syrian. Here, we have Pakistanis, Afghans, Iraqis, and they all throw away their papers and claim to be Syrian.”
Being from Syria is the surest path to refugee status. “Oh yes,” he said. “Everyone is a Syrian now. It is a big problem.”
Five hundred yards down the railroad tracks, at the gap in the fence, a few dozen new arrivals rested before continuing on to the distant line of police officers and television crews.
“We are lost, we have no cellphones,” said Pierre Alshoufi, 18, who said he was a Christian from Hama, Syria. “They fell into the Greek sea. Please, what is up ahead? Can anyone tell us what will become of us?”