Greece readies rent assistance plan as migrant numbers grow

They also agreed to expand border operations and make full use of biometric data, such as fingerprints, as they register and screen migrants, before deciding whether to grant them asylum or send them home.

Meanwhile, European Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker slammed EU member states for only providing less than half of the experts pledged to the bloc’s Frontex border agency in migrant hotspots Greece and Italy. The plan envisions increasing cooperation and consultations, as well as discourages movement of refugees to the border of countries without informing neighboring states.

Mr Juncker said countries are “moving slowly at a time when they should be running”. He underlined that the nations had agreed to weekly monitoring of their commitments to ensure compliance with the agreement.

He called the latest migrant deal “a step in the right direction” as he warned “Europe will start falling apart” if the crisis is not dealt with.

According to the draft statement: “400 border guards will be dispatched to secure the border between Greece, Macedonia and Albania”.

“Countries affected should therefore talk to each other”.

Serbia’s prime minister is calling for a “comprehensive solution” to the migrant crisis at the upcoming summit of several European Union and Balkan nations.

In the frontline of the migrant wave this year, Greece has been criticised for failing to implement European Union law on registering new arrivals.

“I believe we have a big responsibility when refugees every day lose their lives in the Aegean Sea”, he said.

“If we will not be able to agree with the country of entrance, I’m afraid it will be very hard to find a solution”, Tsipras said. “We can not and should not deal with each other this way”, Horst Seehofer said.

As the leaders met, those out in the field begged them to act quickly and more decisively.

More than 700,000 refugees and migrants have reached Europe’s Mediterranean shores so far this year, amid the continent’s worst migration crisis since World War II, the United Nations refugee agency said Tuesday.

“There are very, very many, but there are 80 million of us”, the German leader said at an event in Nuremberg. “These people don’t need to take these risky journeys if there are legal pathways to come to Europe”. Most are aiming to get to Germany or Scandinavia.

The coast guard says the boat carried 63 migrants at the time and 53 of the passengers were rescued.

The dead children were aged 2 and 7, she said, adding that their ethnic origin was not known.

More than half of this year’s arrivals were from Syria, 18% from Afghanistan, and 6% from Iraq.

Syrian refugee Mohamed Alabdulameed, 28, is one of many trekking across Europe as part of a desperate bid to escape the war ravaging his country.

More than a dozen migrants have been killed in the last few months after climbing on top of trains or trucks going through the Channel Tunnel.

Police spokesman Frank Koller said Austria had informed them that nine buses carrying asylum seekers were on their way to Bavaria today, but from “unofficial sources, we learnt that there are in actual fact 22 buses on the way”.

The number of people on the move across Europe was still in the tens of thousands.

Slovenia’s police said Monday nearly 10,000 migrants entered Slovenia from Croatia in the same period, bringing the total number of arrivals in the past 12 days to almost 75,000.