Croatia, overwhelmed by stream of migrants, seeks to divert them to neighboring countries
Migrants in Beli Manastir, Croatia, near the Hungarian border.
Like a river diverted, Europe’s flow of migrants and refugees on Friday surged through Croatia, which sought to hand them off to angry and resistant Hungary and Slovenia. About 15,000 voyagers were left miserable, bewildered and marooned in the small former Yugoslav republic amid the standoff.
The continent’s biggest human displacement since World War II brought more confusion and discord among the Central and Eastern European nations that have been overwhelmed by the relentless wave of arrivals.
The passport-free zone of travel among many European states — under the so-called Schengen agreement that is a prized achievement of the European Union — has been left in tatters by the tide of humanity passing through, and by various states’ border policies that have changed from one day to the next, both within the EU and on its fringes.
Croatia, buffeted by thousands of migrants and refugees after Hungary sealed its southern border with Serbia earlier this week, declared it could not take in any more, after initially expressing willingness to allow its territory to be used for transit to wealthier destinations to the north and west.
It sent busloads of people toward Hungary’s border, but after allowing some through, Hungarian police blocked later arrivals, news reports said — creating the latest bottleneck on the tortuous asylum-seekers’ trail.
Hungary eventually relented and let some more people through, sending them straight on toward Austria, the gateway to Germany, but railed at Croatia’s move to push arrivals its way, calling it “unacceptable.”
Croatia also directed migrants and refugees toward its border with Slovenia, which deployed riot police to blockade the frontier and threatened to return to Croatia those who did slip through. Slovenia, incensed, summoned the Croatian ambassador to complain, while Croatia appealed to German Chancellor Angela Merkel for help in setting a consistent policy.
Amid the swelling crisis, the United Nations refugee agency said about 4,000 people continued to pour daily into Greece, the Southern European terminus on the route taken by tens of thousands this summer.
Nearly 400,000 people have sought asylum in the European Union in the first half of the year, the European statistics agency said. Syrians and Afghans make up the largest share, but many nationalities are represented in the current wave. Germany has taken in nearly 40% of them, and other European nations have been slow to step up and offer to host significant numbers.
Switzerland, which is not an EU member, said Friday it would take up to 1,500 asylum seekers who have already been registered in the main “gateway” countries of Italy and Greece. But the European Union has not been able to win an accord on the distribution within the bloc of 120,000 others — a fraction of those who have arrived.
EU officials are trying to reassure Balkan countries they will not be left to cope with the crisis alone. Tens of thousands of refugees and migrants have passed through Serbia and Macedonia, both relatively poor countries that are ill equipped to deal with the crush.
“You are not a parking lot for refugees,” EU Enlargement Commissioner Johannes Hahn told the Macedonian parliament, according to the Associated Press. “You are also victims of the situation, and we won’t abandon you.”
Pope Francis has urged Roman Catholic parishes to take in asylum-seeking families, and the Vatican said Friday that the city-state had made good on its own pledge to do so. A Syrian refugee family of four has applied for asylum in Italy and will be housed at the Vatican in the meantime.
The migrant and refugee crisis is affecting a cherished German institution: Oktoberfest, centered in the Bavarian city of Munich, which has been a major gateway for arrivals. German officials are weighing a plan to divert trainloads of asylum seekers away from the city during the festival, which begins Saturday.
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