Juncker says European Union to aid refugees, tighten border controls

Two dozen police in surgical masks and gloves have blocked access to train platforms for more than 400 refugees and migrants holding tickets to Vienna. About 300 are on a motorway, escorted by police.

Harper also called on Jordan to consider issuing work permits for 50,000 to 100,000 Syrian refugees so they can be less dependent on aid.

Numerous migrants have waited 8-10 hours to board a train.

In response, Hungary is planning to send soldiers to help police patrol the border.

A Hungarian TV camerawoman was sacked on Tuesday after footage appeared to show her kicking migrants, including children, as they ran away from a police line during disturbances at Roszke.

“There is no religion, there is no belief, there is no philosophy when it comes to refugees“, the former Luxembourg prime minister said.

“We have agreed on a programme and I would like this programme to be respected by all future Greek governments”.

The figures of 120,000 persons to be relocated shows that Germany and France should take in 46 percent of asylum seekers.

The move came a day after hundreds of migrants refused to disembark from services arriving from Germany and register in Denmark, demanding instead to continue to Sweden, which has a more welcoming asylum policy.

Meanwhile, neighboring Austria has also faced a new rise in numbers of refugees coming from Hungary, as over 3,000 people set foot on its soil overnight.

Torrential rain has turned the Macedonian border into a sea of mud – the latest trial facing those on the 1,000 mile-plus trek into Europe. It will not. But pushing back boats from piers, setting fire to refugee camps, or turning a blind eye to poor and helpless people: “that is not Europe, ” he said.

“We heard they are hitting people,” he said.

Despite wrapping themselves up in garbage bags of every kind, the migrants, many of them fleeing the war in Syria, were soaked to the skin. They are their countries and their countries’ problems are theirs to deal with, not mine.

Europe is “not in good shape” as it faces several challenges including a tide of desperate refugees at its external and internal borders, the EU’s president Jean-Claude Juncker has said in his first “State of the European Union” address.

But he also warned member states against making religious distinctions when deciding to admit refugees.

Romania has been asked to accept 6,351 people.

But not all agree with his vision.

Interior ministers from European Union member states are expected to clash at a summit on Monday – with the leaders of Slovakia, Hungary, Poland and the Czech Republic already calling plans to introduce mandatory quotas “unacceptable”.

If the new arrivals are integrated quickly and well into schools and the workforce they could “present more opportunities than risks”, said Ms Merkel.

He said Germany’s open door for Muslims fleeing war in Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan would leave Hungary besieged by Islam from both west and east, even worse than when Hungary battled eastern invasion by Ottoman Turks from the 15th to 17th centuries. “They will be replaced by these processing points”, Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s chief-of-staff Janos Lazar told journalists at a press conference in Budapest.

“What we see now is quite a significant shift”, said Madeline Garlick, a guest researcher at the Center for Migration Law at Radboud University in the Netherlands.