With more than 500,000 migrants entering the EU this year, the German chancellor warns her partners ahead of Wednesday’s emergency meeting

Refugee crisis: we must act together, says Merkel ahead of emergency summit

A divided European leadership will try to seek a credible response to the continent’s worst migration crisis since the second world war at an emergency summit on Wednesday.



As central European countries abandoned attempts to stop thousands of refugees from crossing their borders towards Austria on Sunday, German chancellor Angela Merkel called on her peers to accept joint responsibility.

The Guardian view on refugees and the EU: time to sort the leaders from the led | Editorial Read more

“Germany is willing to help. But it is not just a German challenge, but one for all of Europe,” Merkel told a gathering of trade unionists. “Europe must act together and take on responsibility. Germany can’t shoulder this task alone.“

Striking a more sceptical tone on migration than in previous weeks, Merkel also warned that Germany could not shelter those who were moving for economic reasons rather than to flee war or persecution.

“We are a big country. We are a strong country. But to make out as if we alone can solve all the social problems of the world would not be realistic,” she told a gathering of the Verdi trade union.

The foreign ministers of the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Slovakia, Romania and Latvia will hold talks on Monday with their counterpart from Luxembourg, which currently holds the EU presidency, aimed at addressing divides between neighbouring states.

Donald Tusk, president of the European Council, who chairs EU summits, said on Twitter on Sunday following a weekend visit to Jordan and Egypt that the EU needed to help Syrian refugees find a better life closer at home.

That will be one of the topics of discussion for Wednesday’s summit in Brussels as hundreds of thousands of refugees and migrants brave the seas and trek across the Balkan peninsula to reach the affluent countries of northern Europe.

The 28-member bloc has struggled to find a unified response to the crisis, which has tested many of its newer members in the east that are unaccustomed to large-scale immigration.

On Sunday Hungary erected a steel gate and fence posts at a border crossing with Croatia, the EU’s newest member state. Overwhelmed by an influx of some 25,000 migrants this week, Croatia has been sending them north by bus and train to Hungary, which has waved them on to Austria.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Croatian police are overwhelmed as thousands of refugees attempt to board a train in the town of Tovarnik on Sunday

At least 15,000 refugees mainly from Syria, Afghanistan and Iraq were funnelled from Croatia into Hungary and then onwards to Austria over the weekend, the Austrian news agency APA said. Another 2,500 have crossed from Croatia into Slovenia.

The influx of migrants, most of them fleeing war and poverty in their home countries, has led to bitter recriminations between European governments while the temporary closure of national borders has undermined one of the most tangible achievements of the union.

“If you don’t cope with this crisis, then I think the EU will fall apart,” said a senior EU official.

The official said European leaders would discuss longer-term strategies for dealing with the crisis, particularly increasing cooperation with Turkey and the countries bordering Syria to keep the millions of refugees at home. Tusk said more aid to the World Food Programme and the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees would also be on the agenda.

Refugee crisis: Croatian PM vows to force Hungary to open borders - live Read more

Beefing up the EU’s asylum agency, Frontex, into a full border and coastguard agency, and working on hotspots and a list of “safe countries” whose citizens would not normally qualify for asylum, would also be up for discussion, the official said.

On Saturday, German vice-chancellor Sigmar Gabriel said the EU needed to provide 1.5 billion euros ($1.70 billion) to the two agencies to address funding shortfalls.



The EU prides itself on cementing peace among countries and fostering prosperity by removing internal barriers among its member states through the so-called Schengen agreement.

But with more than 500,000 people crossing the Mediterranean into Europe this year alone and a heavy-handed response from some member countries such as Hungary have seen the EU’s ambitions to act as one fall short.

The EU’s interior ministers meet on Tuesday and are expected to agree on a voluntary relocation scheme to redistribute 160,000 refugees from frontline states across the the bloc, a fraction of the total entering Europe.

French president François Hollande said he wanted the interior ministers to address the most difficult aspects of the migration crisis by Tuesday so that EU leaders could focus exclusively on financing at Wednesday’s summit.

“I really wish all these issues to be solved by the ministers’ reunion,” Hollande said on Sunday during a state visit to Morocco.

EU ambassadors met on Sunday to try to hammer out compromises ahead of Tuesday’s meeting but several issues still needed to be solved and work would continue until then, said a spokeswoman for the EU presidency.