EU Fails to Agree on Major Step to Resolve Migrant Crisis

They were taken to processing centers before they were allowed to leave Hungary.

Hundreds of migrants are stranded at the Serbia-Hungary border after the Hungarian government closed the frontier with a new razor-wire fence.

The six men knelt in the morning sunshine, their noses nearly touching the wire fence that encircles warehouses in the village of Morahalom.

In Baghdad, there have been weekly protests against the rife corruption of an inept government marked by daily power cuts, spiking food prices, and a lack of security.

But after tens of thousands converged on Munich in recent weeks, Germany abruptly reintroduced border controls with other Schengen states.

The temporary reintroduction of border controls between Member States is an exceptional possibility explicitly foreseen in and regulated by the Schengen Borders Code, in case of a crisis situation. Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico declared his country would never agree to quotas, and threats of financial retaliation would lead to “the end of the EU“.

However, the European Union ministers formally approved a plan first aired in May to relocate 40,000 refugees. “We need to establish a European spirit again”, she told a news conference. Austria said it would dispatch armed forces to guard its eastern frontier with Hungary.

“The United States feels it is important…to also take our share of Syrian refugees as part of this overall humanitarian effort”, he added during a meeting with Spain s King Felipe VI. We want to go to Vienna; we don’t want to stay in this country.

“But Hungary is a country that has some resources”.

Horgoš is around 160 miles from the Croatian border and further from Romania, and with no transport away from the border zone, there are few options for refugees to divert around Hungary. Serbia, however, has warned they may not accept them either.

Anyone found trying to cross illegally will face criminal charges, with 30 judges on standby to try expected offenders, while others will be detained in processing centres or turned back to Serbia if their applications are refused.

Rights groups say Serbia meets none of the criteria and is still finding homes for thousands of its own refugees from the collapse of Yugoslavia in the 1990s, the last time Europe confronted displacement of people on such a scale.

“Certainly, as that is the worldwide legal rule, therefore it must be done that way”, said government spokesman Zoltan Kovacs.

It is a European problem, although Europe is not the only one responsible for what is going on, he said.

A migrant looks through a fence at the closed Roszke-Horgos border crossing. What happened here I will wait, Hungary opens the door. “We have lost everything to reach this point”. Germany, Slovakia, and Austria also re-imposed border controls after a month that saw a record 156,000 new arrivals.

According to the Hungarian official, “the only solution to the migration crisis is the closing of EU’s borders” and, “assisting those countries from which the refugees come – or the neighboring countries where there is a possibility to stop them”. Asked if he might consider another route, he replied: “I don’t know”.

It’s a stark image to see Europe’s most powerful leader so comfortable with “Third World Looking People”-anthropologist Ghassan Hage’s caustic name for how politically (in)correct western progressives would like to talk about asylum seekers, but hold themselves back”.