Hungary is new hot spot on migrant route into EU - Part 2

February 4th, 2016
Romania plans to open refugee camp near Hungarian border
By Hungary Matters

The Romanian government is planning to open a refugee camp in Tășnad (Tasnád), in north-western Romania, some 30 kilometres from the border with Hungary, daily Magyar Idők said. The camp would provide accommodation to some 600, mainly Syrian refugees, despite protests from the town’s leaders and residents, the paper said. Gábor Kereskényi, a lawmaker of the Democratic Union of Hungarians in Romania, said the government had not consulted with anyone in the town about opening the refugee camp. Kereskényi also said the north-western county is the wrong lace for a refugee camp even in terms of geography, because it is too far from Romania’s south-western border where migrants are entering the country. The refugee camp should instead be set up in western Romania, he said, adding that the best solution would be to erect a fence along Romania’s border with Serbia.

A Viennese court has jailed a suspected Isis fighter and his teenage bride after they were caught attempting to travel to Syria.

A 15-year old Islamic State (Isis) sympathizer who was sentenced last year after admitting that he plotted to blow up Westbahnhof railway station in Vienna has appeared in court again, charged with distributing Isis propaganda.

Austria’s government has said it will announce new measures this week to secure its southern border crossings in Tyrol and Carinthia where migrants and refugees are likely to try and cross when faced with stricter controls at the border with Slovenia.

An admission by Austrian health officials that asylum seekers have been given priority for hospital visits has been greeted by angry reaction.

Austria’s population now numbers almost 8.7 million, according to figures released by Statistics Austria. The refugee crisis has seen the proportion of foreign nationals rise sharply - to 14.6 percent of the total population.

WARSAW, Poland (AP) — So where should the next impenetrable razor-wire border fence in Europe be built? 
February 15, 2016


Macedonian Army soldiers attach a razor wire to a fence on the border line with Greece, near the southern Macedonian town of Gevgelija

Six nations from Central and Eastern Europe meet Monday in Prague to discuss plans for a new “line of defense” for Europe that involves a double fence along Greece’s northern border.

Hungary's right-wing Prime Minister Viktor Orban thinks he knows the best place — on Macedonia's and Bulgaria's borders with Greece — smack along the main immigration route from the Middle East to Western Europe. He says it's necessary because "Greece can't defend Europe from the south" against the large numbers of Muslim refugees pouring in, mainly from Syria and Iraq.

The plan is especially controversial because it effectively means eliminating Greece from the Schengen zone, Europe's 26-nation passport-free travel region that is considered one of the European Union's most cherished achievements.

Orban's plan will feature prominently Monday at a meeting in Prague of leaders from four nations in an informal gathering known as the Visegrad group: Hungary, Poland, the Czech Republic and Slovakia. The Visegrad group, formed 25 years ago to further the nations' European integration, is marking that anniversary Monday. Still, it has only recently found a common purpose in its unified opposition to accepting any significant number of migrants.

This determination has emboldened the group, one of the new mini-blocs emerging lately in Europe due to the continent's chaotic, inadequate response to its largest migration crisis since World War II.

"The plan to build a new "European defense line" along the border of Bulgaria and Macedonia with Greece is a major foreign policy initiative for the Visegrad Four and an attempt to re-establish itself as a notable political force within the EU," said Vit Dostal, an analyst with the Association for International Affairs, a Prague based think tank.

At Monday's meeting, leaders from the four nations will be joined by Macedonian President Gjorge Ivanov and Bulgarian Prime Minister Boiko Borisov so they can push for the reinforcements along Greece's northern border. Macedonia began putting up a first fence in November, and is now constructing a second, parallel, fence.

"If it were up only to us Central Europeans, that region would have been closed off long ago," Orban said at a press conference recently with Poland's prime minister. "Not for the first time in history we see that Europe is defenseless from the south ... that is where we must ensure the safety of the continent."

Poland has indicated a willingness to send dozens of police to Macedonia to secure the border, something to be decided at Monday's meeting. "If the EU is not active, the Visegrad Four have to be," Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico said recently. "We have to find effective ways of protecting the border."

The leaders will try to hash out a unified position ahead of an important EU meeting Thursday and Friday in Brussels that will take up both migration and Britain's efforts to renegotiate a looser union with the EU.

The anti-migrant message resonates with the ex-communist EU member states, countries that have benefited greatly from EU subsidies and freedom of movement for their own citizens but which now balk at requests to accept even small numbers of refugees. The Visegrad nations maintain it is impossible to integrate Muslims into their societies, often describing them as security threats. So far the Poles, Czechs and Slovaks have only accepted small numbers, primarily Christians from Syria.

Many officials in the West are frustrated with what they see as xenophobia and hypocrisy, given that huge numbers of Poles, Hungarians and other Eastern Europeans have received refuge and economic opportunity in the West for decades.

Indeed there are plenty of signs that the countries are squandering a lot of the good will that they once enjoyed in the West for their sacrifices in throwing off communism and establishing democracies.

Orban's ambitions for Europe got a big boost with the rise to power last year in Poland of the right-wing Law and Justice party, which is deeply anti-migrant and sees greater regional cooperation as one of its foreign policy priorities. Polish Prime Minister Beata Szydlo's government says it wants to do more to help Syrian refugees at camps in Turkey and elsewhere while blocking their entry into Europe.

Although Orban is alienating Greek authorities, who are staggering under the sheer numbers of asylum-seekers crossing the sea from Turkey in smugglers' boars, he insists he must act as a counterweight to Western leaders, whom he accuses of creating the crisis with their welcoming attitude to refugees.

"The very serious phenomenon endangering the security of everyday life which we call migration did not break into Western Europe violently," he said. "The doors were opened. And what is more, in certain periods, they deliberately invited and even transported these people into Western Europe without control, filtering or security screening."

Dariusz Kalan, an analyst at the Polish Institute of International Affairs, said he doesn't believe that the Visegrad group on its own can destroy European unity but says Orban's vision is winning adherents across the continent in far-right movements and even among mainstream political parties.

"It's hard to ignore Orban," Kalan said. "People in Western Europe are starting to adopt the language of Orban. None are equally tough and yet the language is still quite similar."

THESSALONIKI, Greece (AP) — Greek police say Macedonia has closed its southern border with Greece to Afghan migrants, allowing entry only for Iraqis and Syrians. Macedonian authorities reportedly said that Serbia has done the same on its southern border with Macedonia.

An Afghan refugee wrapped in a blanket, sits in the rain waiting for a permission to cross the border from Macedonia into Serbia, on the border line between the two countries, near the Tabanovce transit center for refugees in northern Macedonia, Saturday, Feb. 20, 2016. Croatia, Serbia, Slovenia, Macedonia and Austria have agreed that the main screening of the migrants would take place in Macedonia on the border with Greece and that those who pass the control will be transported under police escort all the way to the Austrian border.

Macedonian police started restricting the flow of migrants across the Greek-Macedonian border Saturday, conducting body searches and demanding passports. Earlier, they had accepted Greek police's official documents attesting that an individual had been processed.

The moves have led to a buildup of migrants waiting at the Greek side of the border. Greek police said 800 were stranded at the border Sunday and another 2,750 were waiting in 55 buses nearby. In the 24 hours to 6 a.m. local (0400 GMT) Sunday, only 310 migrants had been allowed into Macedonia.