Leaders from several European countries are holding an emergency meeting to try to find a common position on the migrant crisis in the Balkans.<\/p>\n
A draft statement calls on countries to stop waving through migrants without the agreement of their neighbours.<\/p>\n
Slovenian PM Miro Cerar warned that the EU would “start falling apart” without concrete action on the crisis.<\/p>\n
Ten EU and three non-EU states are taking part but the absence of Turkey at the summit has been questioned.<\/p>\n
“Today the discussion will be among the countries along the corridor of the refugee flows,” said Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras.<\/p>\n
“But everybody knows at the end of the corridor there is an entrance.”<\/p>\n
The draft leaked ahead of the meeting calls for the “gradual and controlled” movement of people through the migration route.<\/p>\n
It also proposes to bolster EU patrols at Greece’s borders and to send 400 extra guards to Slovenia.<\/p>\n
Germany Chancellor Angela Merkel said the refugee crisis could not be solved without the help of Turkey.<\/p>\n
Balkan bottlenecks<\/strong><\/p>\n Hungary closed its border with Croatia last week. As a result, Slovenia saw 58,000 arrivals in the week leading up to Saturday, and many people are waiting in wet and cold conditions.<\/p>\n “We will not be able to endure this for weeks if we do not get help,” said Mr Cerar, arriving for the summit.<\/p>\n The Slovenian government has accused Croatia of deliberately dumping thousands of migrants on the border.<\/p>\n Croatia says it has no choice because Slovenia is allowing far fewer into the country than it should be.<\/p>\n European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker, who called the meeting in Brussels, told German newspaper Bild: “Every day counts.”<\/p>\n If no agreement is reached, he added, “we will soon see families in cold rivers in the Balkans perish miserably”.<\/p>\n Fears of Germany and Austria closing their own borders have led Bulgaria, Romania and Serbia to threaten to do so.<\/p>\n Bulgarian Prime Minister Boyko Borisov said the three countries would not “become buffer zones”.<\/p>\n The International Organization for Migration said that more than 9,000 migrants arrived in Greece every day last week – the highest rate so far this year.<\/p>\n Most of the migrants – including many refugees from the conflicts in Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan – want to reach Germany to claim asylum.<\/p>\n Germany says it expects to take in 800,000 asylum seekers this year. Leaders from several European countries are holding an emergency meeting to try to find a common position on the migrant crisis in the Balkans. A draft statement calls on countries to stop waving through migrants without the agreement of their neighbours. Slovenian PM Miro Cerar warned that the EU would “start falling apart” without concrete […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":29,"featured_media":162250,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[],"tags":[38,14],"yoast_head":"\n
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\nBy: BBC<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"