EU, Balkan leaders agree on plan to manage flow of migrants

Meanwhile, Slovenia’s foreign minister has hinted that the small country may erect a fence along its border with Croatia to stem the influx of tens of thousands of refugees and other migrants. “There was no co-operation whatsoever between the police officers and we agreed that we need to exchange information at the level of the relevant ministries, but even at the level of governments in order to be prepared to handle this migrant and refugee inflow”, said Ivanov.

According to a draft statement to be considered at the meeting, the European Union is set to deploy more than 400 border guards within a week in the western Balkans.

A girl waved on a bus heading to a temporary refugee shelter in Munich, Germany on September 6, 2015. German authorities said around 15,000 new arrivals crossed into the country over the weekend.

His tiny nation of a few two million has been swamped by more than 60,000 migrants in a matter of days, including here outside the village of Dobova near the Croatian border.

Slovenia’s Prime Minister, Miro Cerar, says the European Union risks falling apart if it can not work together on the crisis.

“We’re at the beginning of the bad season”. Majority have undertaken the perilous journey with the help of traffickers and smugglers, who have attempted to exploit the situation by ferrying refugees in overcrowded rubber boats.

“Every day counts. Otherwise we will soon see families in cold rivers in the Balkans perish miserably”, European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker told the Telegraph on Sunday, October 25. “From the Commission’s point of view, we are willing to find additional means of supporting those countries which are most exposed to the refugee crisis and Greece is among them”, Valdis Dombrovskis told a news conference in Athens on Monday.

Among measures agreed at the meeting in Brussels on Sunday evening were that 100,000 places in reception centres should be made available along the route from Greece toward Germany.

“The challenge now is to slow down the flow of migration and to bring our external borders under control”.

Agreements were also made that refugees who do not wish to seek worldwide protection are not allowed to cross borders, and that each country should inform its neighbour when transporting refugees to certain locations along the borders.

“As winter looms, the sight of thousands of refugees sleeping rough as they make their way through Europe represents a damning indictment of the EU’s failure to offer a coordinated response to the refugee crisis”, said John Dalhuisen of Amnesty worldwide. There is also a political part: “Turkey has been promised quite a lot of things, so I think it’s clear for the Balkan countries that there is something in for them as well”.