Zoran Milanović says refugees will be given food and shelter before being moved on, as country directs arrivals to Hungary and Slovenia

Croatia can no longer carry the burden of the thousands of refugees and migrants who have entered in recent days, its prime minister has said, as he announced a new policy of moving people on, in some cases to Hungary, instead of registering and accommodating them in accordance with EU rules.

More than 13,000 people have entered Croatia from Serbia since Wednesday, following the closure of Hungary’s Serbian border. Croatia has closed seven of its eight road border crossings with Serbia, though people are continuing to enter through the countryside.

Croatia can no longer accept refugee burden, says PM - live updates Read more

Zoran Milanović, the Croatian PM, told a news conference: “We cannot register and accommodate these people any longer. They will get food, water and medical help, and then they can move on. The European Union must know that Croatia will not become a migrant hotspot.”

In an echo of the language adopted by David Cameron earlier this month, he added: “We have hearts, but we also have heads.”

Milanović said Croatia cannot and will not close its borders, but will redirect people towards Hungary and Slovenia and further towards western Europe. “What else can we do?” he said. “You are welcome in Croatia and you can pass through Croatia. But, go on. Not because we don’t like you but because this is not your final destination.”

In an apparent sign of the new policy, Croatian authorities sent 19 buses carrying migrants and refugees to the Hungarian border village of Beremend on Friday. People were picked up from there by Hungarian buses.

The Hungarian foreign minister, Peter Szijjarto, said in a statement later on Friday that Croatia was encouraging thousands of migrants to cross the border illegally, which Hungary now considers a felony. He described the Croatian prime minister’s handling of the refugees as “pathetic.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Hungarian police monitor a large group of migrants and refugees at a border crossing between Hungary and Croatia at Beremend. Photograph: Balazs Mohai/EPA

On Wednesday, Milanović had optimistically declared the country was “ready to accept and direct” refugees and migrants. But by Thursday, his government had discovered that this crisis is beyond what any single country can deal with on an unplanned, unilateral basis – even with the best of intentions.



Tempers frayed in Tovarnik, near Croatia’s Serbian border, when it became apparent that the government had not prepared enough transport or water for the huge volume of people entering from the east. The scenes that unfolded, as hundreds of refugees rushed past police lines in a desperate effort to grab the few available places onboard trains heading north to Zagreb and into Slovenia, once again underscored the inability of European governments to comprehend and prepare for the continent’s biggest wave of mass migration since the second world war.

A specially commissioned train that arrived to pick many of of the people stranded in Tovarnik at about midnight was still waiting in the station at 7am, its 10 carriages packed with about 1,000 restless refugees largely from Syria, Afghanistan and Iraq. Hundreds more refugees arrived in the town during the night, after being bussed straight from Macedonia to the Croatian border by the Serbian government.

In the town of Beli Manastir, near the border with Hungary, migrants slept on streets, on train tracks and at a local gas station. People were scrambling to board local buses, without knowing where they were going, and fighting broke out in the long queues for train tickets.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Fights break out as refugees queue at Croatia station

About 100 people have already crossed into Slovenia from Croatia and were being held at a makeshift processing centre in the border town of Brežice. But Slovenia has also been returning others to Croatia and has stopped all rail traffic between the two countries. Slovenian police have intercepted dozens of people who tried to cross through the forests overnight into the country from Croatia.

Meanwhile, Hungary started building another razor-wire fence overnight, this time along a stretch of its border with Croatia.



Viktor Orbán, the Hungarian prime minister, said the first phase of the 25-mile barrier would be completed on Friday, with coils of razor-wire being laid down before an actual fence goes up. In addition, he said he would deploy 1,800 soldiers and 800 police to the border with Croatia over the next few days.

The UN refugee agency warned of a “buildup” of migrants in Serbia as its neighbours tighten their borders. Adrian Edwards, from the UNHCR, said the crisis is being pushed from one country to another as roughly 4,000 people enter into Greece each day and head north. Stricter border controls threaten a bottleneck in Serbia, “which is not a country with a robust asylum system”, he said, adding: “You aren’t going to solve these problems by closing borders.”

Germany has threatened to use a qualified majority vote to force EU states to accept a binding quota plan to resettle 120,000 refugees across Europe. Foreign minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier told Passauer Neue Presse: “It just cannot be that Germany, Austria, Sweden and Italy carry the burden alone. That’s not how European solidarity works. And if there is no other way, then we should seriously consider to use the instrument of a qualified majority.”

A meeting of EU interior ministers last Monday failed to reach a deal on quotas to distribute 120,000 migrants. An extraordinary summit of the EU has been scheduled for next Wednesday in Brussels, following a request by Berlin and Vienna.