Greek minister: EU provided inadequate help for refugees

Exhausted of waiting, thousands of migrants then broke through a Greek police cordon, surging to the Macedonian border, which immediately closed again.

A 22-year-old Moroccan asylum seeker was electrocuted to death by accident when he touched a power cable after jumping off a train Thursday at the neutral zone between Greece and Macedonia.

“A joint field visit conducted by the Greek authorities and Frontex will take place as soon as possible in order to work out the technical details of the deployment”, the agency said from its Warsaw offices.

The International Organisation for Migration (IOM) reported Friday that the situation on Greece’s border with the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (FYROM) is becoming extremely tense amid protests and sporadic rioting by stranded migrants and refugees.

There have been clashes with the Macedonian security forces, as more migrants continue to arrive at the border and winter draws in. Earlier, Macedonian police fired tear gas at protesting migrants who pelted them with stones. That has since been sealed but medical charity Medecins Sans Frontieres, which is involved in saving people at sea in the Aegean, called on the European Union on Thursday to open new, safer routes to Europe.

Hours before EU interior ministers are to meet on Friday to consider what to do about Greece’s inability to stem the flow of refugees and others streaming toward Europe’s rich north, the Athens government finally heeded calls from Brussels and agreed to accept European aid and foreign border guards. The assistance thus far requested from Greece amounts to the needs of a small city: 20 buses, 26 ambulances, 17 mini vans, water pumps, generators, over 800 heated containers for families, hygienic equipment, 1,000 beds, 1,500 tents, heaters, 100,000 sleeping bags, raincoats, woolen blankets, etc.

German officials noted that the Schengen Border Code allowed the European Commission to make recommendations to a state that it should accept help from other EU members to protect its boders.

One Iranian migrant, who gave his name as Hamid, said they were angry that they were being kept out while those from Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria were classed as refugees and were being let through because they were escaping conflict.

Greece’s minister for migration policy, Ioannis Mouzalas, told Parliament on Thursday the talk of ejecting the country from the Schengen zone comes mostly from European Union members like Hungary, which oppose admitting refugees into the EU.

“We reject mini-Schengens and we want to focus on the protection of external borders”, said Czech PM Bohuslav Sobotka. “Obviously, (the solution) will not be a stroll in the woods… nobody likes to see the use of violence or anything else”.