On Saturday, Austria and Germany threw open their borders to thousands of exhausted refugees, bussed to the Hungarian border by a right-wing government that had tried to stop them but was overwhelmed by the sheer numbers reaching Europe’s frontiers.
Left to walk the last yards into Austria, rain-soaked refugees, many of them fleeing Syria’s civil war, were whisked by train and shuttle bus to Vienna, where authorities arranged for thousands to head straight on to Germany.
German police said the first 1,000 of up to 10,000 refugees expected on Saturday had arrived on special trains in Munich. Austrian police said over 6,000 had entered the country by midday with more expected in what has become Europe’s most acute refugee crisis since the Yugoslav wars of the 1990s.
Munich police said Arabic-speaking interpreters helped refugees with procedures at emergency registration centres. The seemingly efficient Austrian and German reception contrasted with the disorder prevalent in Hungary.
“It was just such a horrible situation in Hungary,” said Omar, arriving in Vienna with his family.
In Budapest, almost emptied of refugees the night before, the main railway station was again filling up with new arrivals but trains to Western Europe remained cancelled. So hundreds set off by foot, saying they would walk to the Austrian border, 170 km away, like others had tried on Friday.
After days of confrontation and chaos, Hungary’s government deployed over 100 buses overnight to take thousands of refugees to the Austrian frontier.
Austria said it had agreed with Germany to allow the refugees access, waiving asylum rules that require them to register in the first EU state they reach.
Wrapped in blankets and sleeping bags against the rain, long lines of weary refugees, many carrying small, sleeping children, got off buses on the Hungarian side of the boundary and walked into Austria, receiving fruit and water from aid workers. Waiting Austrians held signs that read, “Refugees welcome”.
“We’re happy. We’ll go to Germany,” said a Syrian man who gave his name as Mohammed, naming Europe’s famously biggest and most affluent economy that is the favoured destination of many refugees. Another, who declined to be named, said: “Hungary should be fired from the European Union. Such bad treatment.”
Hungary insisted the bus rides were a one-off, even as hundreds more refugees gathered in Budapest, part of a seemingly unrelenting human surge northwards through the Balkan peninsula from Turkey and Greece.
Hungary, the main entry point into Europe’s borderless Schengen zone for refugees, has taken a hard line, vowing to seal its southern frontier with a new, high fence by September 15.
At an EU Foreign Ministers meeting in Luxembourg on Saturday, the usual diplomatic conviviality unravelled as they failed to agree on any practical steps out of the crisis. They are especially at odds over proposals for country-by-country quotas to take in asylum seekers.
“Now the continent of Europe is challenged. In this great challenge the entire continent has to give a unified answer. Whoever still thinks that withdrawal from the EU or a barbed wire fence around Austria will solve the problem is wrong,” said Austrian Interior Minister Johanna Mikl-Leitner.
British Finance Minister George Osborne said Europe and Britain must offer asylum to those genuinely fleeing persecution but also need to boost aid, defeat people-smuggling gangs and tackle the conflict in Syria to ease the migrant crisis. — Reuters
