Two EU states say they will allow no more than 580 refugees and migrants a day to enter their territories

This article is more than 4 years old

This article is more than 4 years old

Croatia and Slovenia have become the latest countries to impose strict limits on the number of refugees allowed to cross their borders.

The two European Union member states announced that no more than 580 refugees and migrants a day would be allowed to enter their territories.

Officials say Europe is on the brink of a humanitarian emergency, with hundreds of refugees arriving in Greece each day and most unable to travel north.

Greek officials said not one person was allowed to cross Greece’s northern border with Macedonia on Friday, as nearly 5,000 people waited at or near a border crossing.

A Macedonian interior ministry official said the reason for the temporary closure was that Serbia, the next country on the Balkan migration corridor, has stopped letting in migrants from Macedonia.

The official said late on Friday that Serbia had not admitted any migrants or refugees for the past 40 hours. Only 150 were allowed to cross from Greece to Macedonia on Thursday, according to Greek police figures.

Last week Austria imposed a daily limit of 3,200 migrants and said it would accept no more than 80 asylum claims per day.

The crisis has divided Europe and prompted Nato to send three warships to the Aegean sea. On Friday Nato’s secretary general, Jens Stoltenberg, said the force would only play a support role.

“Nato ships will not do the job of national coastguards in the Aegean,” he wrote in an article on the alliance’s website. “Their mission is not to stop or turn back those trying to cross into Europe. And this in no way represents a militarisation of the response to the crisis.”

The return of national border controls is chipping away at the EU’s borderless-Schengen zone, pitting governments against each other.

At a conference of Mediterranean countries, Greece’s foreign minister, Nikos Kotzias, criticised the border restrictions and said ministers from France, Italy, Portugal, Malta, Cyprus and Spain were “unanimous” in their support for Greece’s position.



The Mediterranean conference follows an Austrian-led gathering of central European and Balkan countries earlier in the week that excluded Greece.

At the Vienna meeting, countries agreed to step up border controls across the western Balkan route that is used by people hoping to travel to Germany or northern Europe.

'We will not give up now': hope and despair as refugees gather in Athens Read more

The snub provoked a furious response from Athens, which recalled its ambassador to Vienna on Thursday, protesting against “19th-century” policies. Greece has vowed to block all EU decision-making until there is a common plan to deal with the crisis.



Kotzias said Mediterranean countries had voiced “clear criticism” of others “seeking individual solution at the expense of other member states”. His remarks were aimed at Austria and also Hungary, which has announced a referendum on whether to accept an EU quota of refugees.

On Friday the UN refugee agency urged Budapest to “shun the politics of fear on humanitarian issues” and “share responsibility rather than trying to find ways to shift it” to other EU countries.

Hungary’s hardline prime minister, Viktor Orbán, has flatly refused to take in refugees under the quota system, which is designed to share 160,000 people around Europe. His stance has been supported by Poland, Slovakia and the Czech Republic.

Hungary’s justice minister, László Trócsányi, insisted on Friday that the referendum was a matter of national sovereignty. “Our view is that the EU has no authority to order the mandatory settlement of people in any given country,” he said. “The EU has no such jurisdiction.”

The referendum could be held as early as the summer, or at the latest, by the end of the year.

In Greece, refugees staged peaceful protests on Friday, briefly blocking traffic at the main port in Piraeus.

“We hoped to get to Germany and all the people around here are looking to get to Germany,” Mukhtar Ahmad, an Afghan migrant, told the Associated Press.

“But when we came here, the Macedonian borders closed. We are really disappointed. We are hopeless, we are homeless.”