Greece braces for growing number of stranded migrants

Thousands of migrants crowded the Greek border with Macedonia on Monday as the Balkan countries they must traverse to reach wealthier parts of Europe pushed their gates further shut.

Some 5,000 people were stuck on the border and another 4,000 arrived at Piraeus port, as Macedonia said only Syrians and Iraqis would be let in.

Meanwhile at the Serbian border town of Sid, some 200 migrants on Sunday staged a sit-down protest on a road leading to the frontier after police stopped them from walking to the Croatian border a few kilometres (miles) away, state broadcaster RTS reported. At least one man made it over, and was promptly arrested by police on the Macedonian side.

“I lost everything in the war, I have no documents”, he said, declining to give his name. A peaceful protest took place at the Idomeni camp Saturday, when 30 artists from Greece, Turkey and Croatia organized a parade along with the refugees and asylum seekers that marched towards the border, asking for a safe passage.

Chancellor Angela Merkel has struggled to forge a joint European Union response to the region’s migrant crisis.

“We’ve been here for three days, and no one knows why they have closed the border”, he told the AP.

Last week Austria imposed a daily limit of 80 asylum claims.

Labor Minister Aleksandar Vulin said Sunday that “everyone can move in accordance with the rules set by Austria and Slovenia”. Several thousand migrants have been stranded at…

According to a Europol report, criminal networks involved in people smuggling had an estimated turnover last year of 3-6 billion euros ($3.3-$6.6 billion), as more than 1 million migrants arrived last year. “I don’t need food and I don’t need water”. Those who are caught cutting the fence go to court and are expelled.

“If the European countries dealing with the consequences of the migrant crisis opt to close their borders, what else is there for a country like Montenegro to do”, said Djukanovic, in London for a conference of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development.

In Rome, Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi also blasted the Visegrad countries, which are large recipients of European Union regional aid funds, and threatened them with sanctions. The Austrian move will not make a much of a difference in Germany, the final destination for many migrants, as this still amounts to a million new people per year.

The new plan comes after Croatia sent 217 Afghan, Syrian and Iraqi refugees back to Serbia late Tuesday for reasons that were not immediately clear, according to the United Nations refugee agency. “We do what we’re asked to do”. Macedonia grounds the measure with the decision of the Serbian authorities not to allow more Afghan migrants on Serbian territory.

It is only required to upload onto Europe’s shared fingerprint database, Eurodac, the data of those who actually apply for asylum in the country, which is less than 10 per cent of those crossing into Austria.

Germany’s interior minister says his country won’t put up in the long term with other nations simply waving migrants through to Germany, and is objecting to the number that neighboring Austria is allowing to transit. Two 20-year-olds were temporarily detained.

A fire damaged a former hotel that was being converted into a refugee home in eastern Germany as bystanders celebrated, police said Sunday, days after a mob in the same state blocked a bus carrying asylum-seekers. Several thousand migrants have been s…