Slovenia wants European Union police help to cope with influx of migrants

The migrants were reportedly angry at delays in registering them and moving them on to the Austrian border, witnesses said.

Hungary sealed its border with Croatia last week, blocking entry with a metal fence and razor wire. On Wednesday morning, Bostjan Šefic, Slovenia’s State Secretary of the Ministry of the Interior, said the country will try to open a second exit point for refugees on the border with Austria to reduce the pressure on Slovenia.

Leaders of Slovenia deployed military units to support police on their overwhelmed southern border with Croatia, which delivered more than 6,000 asylum seekers by train and bus to the frontier in disputed circumstances between the former Yugoslav rivals.

“We need fast assistance of the European Union”, President Borut Pahor told a news conference in Brussels after meeting European Council President Donald Tusk and EU chief executive Jean-Claude Juncker.

“I deplore the lack of communication and cooperation with the Croatian authorities”, Prime Minister Miro Cerar said in an interview published in German daily Die Welt today.

In response to the crisis, the parliament voted early Wednesday to grant greater powers to the army and allow soldiers to join border police in patrolling the 670-kilometre (416-mile) frontier with Croatia.

A fire has broken out at a camp for migrants in Slovenia, with plumes of smoke rising and firefighters rushing to put it out.

Milanovic said the only solution that would bring the migrant influx under control lies at the border between Turkey and Greece, where the refugees first enter the EU. Croatian police had deployed on the boundary to stop them but then moved away.

Chancellor Angela Merkel says that those who come to Germany only for economic reasons must be told: “You must leave our country, otherwise we won’t manage to provide protection for those who need protection”.

Nations invited to attend are European Union member states Austria, Bulgaria, Croatia, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Romania and Slovenia, and non-EU countries Macedonia and Serbia.

The amendment now means troops can detain people and hand them over to the police, as well as issue orders to civilians in the border area.

“The last 24 hours have been the toughest and most demanding since the start of the crisis”, the Slovenian government said, warning it was “delusional” to expect small countries to succeed where larger ones had failed. A report on Twitter claimed refugees set fire to tents.

Slovenia has seen over 20,000 migrants cross its borders since Saturday, most hoping to continue on to Austria.

“We can not accept millions and millions more people which we would not know how to manage”, said Joseph Daul, chairman of the centre-right European People’s Party which unites conservative parties from across the EU.

With at least 9,000 people landing on Europe’s beaches every day, according to United Nations figures, the wave of migrants and refugees is not expected to decrease despite the approaching winter and the bitterly cold weather on the Balkan trail.

Mustafa, a man in his 30s, wrapped in a gray blanket said that his group of three families spent the night at the border crossing under a piece of discarded tarpaulin as there were not enough tents for everyone.

Two boats with approximately 140 people onboard have landed on the shores of a British air base on the island of Cyprus.