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Hungary closes main Budapest station to refugees Hungary closes main Budapest station to refugees
(about 1 hour later)
Hungarian authorities have closed Budapest’s main station to refugees and migrants following chaotic scenes on Monday, when people who had been camped outside for weeks were suddenly allowed to leave for Austria and Germany without visa checks.Hungarian authorities have closed Budapest’s main station to refugees and migrants following chaotic scenes on Monday, when people who had been camped outside for weeks were suddenly allowed to leave for Austria and Germany without visa checks.
The move followed the earlier closing of the train station altogether, when all trains to the west were stopped from leaving. About 100 police in helmets and wielding batons guarded the station and dozens of refugees and migrants who were inside were forced outside.The move followed the earlier closing of the train station altogether, when all trains to the west were stopped from leaving. About 100 police in helmets and wielding batons guarded the station and dozens of refugees and migrants who were inside were forced outside.
A government spokesman said Hungary was trying to enforce EU law, which requires anyone who wishes to travel in the borderless Schengen zone to hold a valid passport and visa.A government spokesman said Hungary was trying to enforce EU law, which requires anyone who wishes to travel in the borderless Schengen zone to hold a valid passport and visa.
The closure of the station to refugees and migrants appeared prompted in part by pressure from other EU countries trying to cope with arrivals from Hungary. Police in Vienna said on Tuesday that 3,650 people had arrived a day earlier at the city’s Westbahnhof station from Hungary, with most continuing on towards Germany.
“Allowing them to simply board in Budapest ... and watching as they are taken to the neighbour [Austria] – that’s not politics,” said the Austrian chancellor, Werner Faymann, in an interview with state broadcaster ORF.
Related: Packed trains reach Germany as refugee visa checks are waivedRelated: Packed trains reach Germany as refugee visa checks are waived
While critical of Hungary, Austrian authorities also acknowledged they were overwhelmed by the thousands of people who arrived by rail on Monday evening. Police said they did not have the manpower to carry out effective controls, which normally would include turning back to Hungary those without proper travel documents who do not ask for asylum in Austria. The closure of the station to refugees and migrants appeared prompted in part by pressure from other EU countries trying to cope with arrivals from Hungary.
There were chaotic scenes at railway stations in Germany as around 2,000 refugees and migrants arrived on trains from Hungary overnight, with police saying that thousands more were expected on trains throughout the day.
Police in their hundreds at stations in Munich and Rosenheim in Bavaria were escorting passengers – mostly from Syria, but also from Iraq, Afghanistan and Eritrea – off the trains. Exhausted, and dehydrated after long journeys, they were then being taken to reception centres across Bavaria.
Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, said that Germany could cope with the numbers, but on Tuesday stressed again the need for a “fairer distribution” of refugees across the EU at a joint press conference in Berlin with Spain’s prime minister, Mariano Rajoy, before talks where the refugee emergency was to be the main focus.
As refugees shouting “Germany! Germany!” were locked out of Budapest’s Keleti station on Tuesday morning, after having been allowed to travel unhindered to Germany and Austria on Monday, both Berlin and Vienna were demanding answers from Hungary’s government.
Austria’s chancellor, Werner Faymann, did not hide his fury towards Hungary’s prime minister, Viktor Orban, calling on him to ensure the refugees were registered before allowing them to travel over the border.
“That they are simply getting on board in Budapest and they make sure they travel to the neighbouring country – what sort of politics is that?” he angrily told Austrian television.
Many who arrived in Vienna on Monday travelled on to Salzburg, on the border with Germany, where they spent the night in the railway station and were looked after by charity organisations.
Fewer than 10 of about 3,600 people who arrived in Austria had applied for asylum there, the authorities said. The rest said they wanted to go to Germany.
As the German authorities were questioning why Austria had let many of the trains carry on to Germany, Austria’s interior minister Johanna Mikl-Leitner accused Berlin of bringing the situation on itself by “awakening hopes” in refugees after Merkel’s government said last week it would not turn Syrian refugees back.
Refugees who had arrived at Munich station on overnight trains chanted “Ich liebe Angela Merkel” (I love Angela Merkel).
As volunteer organisations set up makeshift arrangements to feed and provide water to new arrivals in Munich, the city’s police said they had reinforced water supplies. Commuters on their way to work in Munich were seen buying ‘brezel’ bread rolls and bottles of water and handing them out to exhausted refugees.
Bavaria’s interior minister, Joachim Herrmann, stressed that none of the refugees from Syria would be sent back to Hungary, as would be usual under EU rules, but would be sent instead to reception centres.
The Schengen agreement requires refugees to seek asylum in the first country they enter under the EU’s Dublin accord, but it emerged last week that Berlin had suspended it for Syrians who would now be permitted to stay in Germany and apply for refugee status – a move that angered Hungary, which said it would encourage more migrants to make the journey to Europe.The Schengen agreement requires refugees to seek asylum in the first country they enter under the EU’s Dublin accord, but it emerged last week that Berlin had suspended it for Syrians who would now be permitted to stay in Germany and apply for refugee status – a move that angered Hungary, which said it would encourage more migrants to make the journey to Europe.
Hundreds of angry refugees and migrants demonstrated outside Budapest’s main station on Tuesday, demanding that it be reopened and they be allowed to travel on to Germany. Hundreds of angry refugees and migrants demonstrated outside Budapest’s main station on Tuesday, demanding that it be reopened to them and they be allowed to travel on to Germany.
Those seeking to travel waved tickets, clapping, booing and hissing, and shouting “Germany, Germany” with police lined up at the entrance to the station. Those seeking to travel waved tickets, clapping, booing and hissing at police lined up at the entrance to the station.
Scuffles broke out earlier in the morning as people were blocked by police as they pushed towards metal gates at the platform where a train was scheduled to leave for Vienna and Munich.Scuffles broke out earlier in the morning as people were blocked by police as they pushed towards metal gates at the platform where a train was scheduled to leave for Vienna and Munich.
Several said they spent hundreds of euros on tickets after police told them they would be allowed passage.
Merkel on Monday sent out her strongest message yet that Germany was bolstering its efforts to deal with the emergency situation, saying: “Germany is a strong country and the motive must be: ‘we’ve managed so much, we can manage this’,” she told a news conference in Berlin.
Related: A laboratory for refugee politics: inside Passau, the 'German Lampedusa'Related: A laboratory for refugee politics: inside Passau, the 'German Lampedusa'
Several said they spent hundreds of euros on tickets after police told them they would be allowed free passage. But she stressed that the situation needed to be seen in its European dimension. “If Europe fails over the refugee question... it will not be the Europe that we had imagined,” she said.
The German chancellor, Angela Merkel, said on Monday that the crisis could destroy the Schengen accord if other EU countries did not take a greater number of refugees. Michael Fuchs, the deputy leader of the parliamentary group of the CDU/CSU conservative alliance, urged that more be done to integrate refugees into the German workplace, calling on the government to set up language courses and to send job centre employees to the reception camps to assess newcomers’ qualifications.
“If we don’t succeed in fairly distributing refugees then of course the Schengen question will be on the agenda for many,” she told a news conference in Berlin. “We stand before a huge national challenge. That will be a central challenge not only for days or months but for a long period of time.” “It makes no sense for them to be hanging around in camps,” he told German Radio DLF. “That will only lead to ghetto-style circumstances.” Fuchs added that the number of those who are expected to seek asylum in Germany would likely need to be revised again from the 800,000 figure give by interior minister Thomas de Maiziere two weeks ago.
But it is far from certain Merkel’s view will prevail when EU ministers hold a crisis meeting on 14 September. Britain, which is outside the Schengen zone, has said the border-free system is part of the problem, and a bloc of central European countries plans to oppose any binding quotas. “I recall that at the start of the year we were talking about 200,000 people. Yesterday, the figure of one million was doing the rounds. It is going up in a manner in which we could never have imagined. Neither should we be under the impression that this influx will be over by the end of the year. It is likely to continue in the same vein next year,” he said.