Austria says time to phase out emergency measures on migrants

Europe’s refugee crisis has taken a new dimension in Germany with the arrival of over 8,000 asylum-seekers in the southern state of Bavaria from Hungary in one single day. “We’re all human. No-one is illegal”.

Overnight, some 4,500 exhausted migrants were bused to the Austrian border by a Hungarian government that gave up trying to stop them and instead decided to help them travel in safety.

Meanwhile migrants are continuing to arrive at Munich station. Most went to Munich, the Bavarian capital, where authorities said some 7,000 people were registered and over half received a bed for the night. Each train to the border takes hundreds more refugees to Western Europe.

Austrian Chancellor Werner Faymann told reporters he had made the decision following what he called ” intensive talks” with German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban.

At least 2,800 have died or disappeared during the journey. The Cypriot coastguard picked up 114 Syrian refugees on Sunday who were adrift in a fishing boat.

Most Germans have been welcoming of the migrants.

The German government will spend an extra €6bn to cope with this year’s record influx of refugees, the ruling coalition said on Monday.

Refugees will receive a five-year humanitarian protection visa, he said.

The European Commission will propose national quotas to relocate 160,000 asylum-seekers arriving in Greece, Hungary and Italy, with Germany taking in more than 40,000 and France almost 31,000.

More than 15,000 refugees arrived in Germany over the weekend, with moving footage emerging from Munich of families being reunited and refugees being cheered as they stepped off trains. Police didn’t check travel documents as passengers walked a few yards to waiting Austria-bound trains, which typically left less than 3 minutes later. And the situation got better when the family arrived in Austria. They are signing online petitions, sending money, visiting the camps in Calais, joining protests, and even offering shelter in their own homes.

That news triggered another mass exodus, following in the footsteps of those thousands who marched toward the Austrian border on Friday.

The attacks include vandalism, hate speech and arson, as well as violent attacks on people.

And on Monday, another suspicious fire broke out at a house for asylum seekers in Rottenburg am Neckar, police said. Three of them were injured when they jumped out of the burning building, while two others had to be treated for smoke inhalation. None of the rooms is inhabitable anymore.

Europe has been split over the idea espoused by Germany and Austria to set fixed quotas for countries to take in migrants in the biggest flow since the violent breakup of Yugoslavia in the 1990s. There, a government in financial crisis is keen to dispatch them into Macedonia, from where they enter Serbia and then Hungary. Serbia is not an European Union country.

But some people are doing exactly that.

French far-right leader Marine Le Pen accused Germany of looking to lower wages and hire “slaves” by opening its doors. “We have helped more than 12,000 people in an acute situation”, he said. “We have carried out our activities according to the law and that will not change”, they said.

She said other European Union nations needed to do more.