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

A Bulgarian national arrested after Austrian police found 20 migrants packed into the nearly airtight back of his truck has been found guilty of human smuggling and sentenced to five years in prison.

Austrian broadcaster ORF cited police as testifying that they found 20 Syrian, Iranian and Afghan nationals pressed tightly against each other in a shared space of less than 7 square meters (about 7 square yards) when they stopped the refrigeration truck in August.

The court in the city of Linz, west of Vienna, didn't identify the 41-year-old, in keeping with Austrian confidentiality laws. He was sentenced Wednesday after pleading guilty. The truck was stopped only after a chase in which two patrol cars were rammed, injuring one officer.

Macedonia has intermittently opened its border with Greece to a tiny trickle of Syrian and Iraqi refugees, leaving about 10,000 more people camped on the Greek side, with more arriving daily.

The border bottleneck has left at least 25,000 people stranded in Greece, the first European country that migrants reach in smuggling boats from Turkey. As the prosperous but divided continent flails in search of a solution to the migration crisis, individual countries led by Austria have imposed refugee caps that have caused a domino effect down the Balkan migrant corridor, which was traversed by a million people over the past year.

Greek police say Macedonian police opened the Idomeni crossing at midnight Tuesday and at 7 a.m. Wednesday, each time for two hours. They admitted a total of 170 people from Syria and Iraq — the only nationalities allowed to continue north.

Macedonia says it will only allow in as many refugees as Serbia, its northern neighbor, accepts each day.

Foreign Ministry rejects referendum criticism from European leaders
By Hungary Matters March 3rd, 2016

The Foreign Ministry said it was “outrageous” that some European leaders have criticised the Hungarian government for “exercising a fundamental tool of democracy” by initiating a referendum on the EU’s mandatory migrant quota scheme The ministry responded to remarks Secretary-General of the Council of Europe Thorbjørn Jagland made to the UN Human Rights Council on Wednesday in which he implied that by holding the referendum, Hungary was “retreating from” European human rights principles. “States cannot simply opt in and out of their international obligations as they see fit,” Jagland told the council, referring to the referendum initiative.

Hungary’s foreign ministry rejected Jagland’s “accusations” in a statement and stressed that Hungary has always complied with all international conventions. The ministry said that “in line with international accords, Hungary provided care for 400,000 migrants last year”, but added that “the government sticks to the stance that no international agreement ensures illegal migrants the right to decide which European country they want to live in”. Hungary will protect both its own borders and those of the Schengen Area, the ministry insisted.

The Latest: Migrant sentenced to 4-1/2 years jail in Serbia

PARIS (AP) — A Serbian court has sentenced a human trafficker to four and a half years in prison for smuggling some 200 migrants over the border from Macedonia last year.

The Organized Crime Court ruled Friday that Rade Sivcev was guilty of "illegal crossing of the state border and human smuggling" between August to December last year. The migrants included Palestinians, Syrians and Pakistanis who sought to reach Hungary, which is a member of the 28-country European Union. Serbia is not.

Human smuggling has flourished in Serbia since the country became part of the so-called Balkan migrant corridor for hundreds of thousands of migrants and refugees fleeing war and poverty in the Middle East, Africa and Asia.

Migrants are often transported in overcrowded vans or crammed in cargo trucks. Many get robbed or double-crossed by ruthless smugglers.

Hungary's prime minister says the European Union should not give up its power to "exclusively" protect its external borders even if an agreement is reached with Turkey next week on stemming the flow of migrants into the region.

Prime Minister Viktor Orban said Friday that "zero immigration is optimal" for Hungary, which has filed a lawsuit at the European Court of Justice against the quota plan to redistribute migrants from Italy and Greece.

Orban spoke after a meeting with Horst Seehofer, head of the Christian Social Union, the smallest party in Germany's governing coalition, and one of the most prominent domestic critics of Chancellor Angela Merkel's policies on migrants.

While Seehofer said he supported Orban's position of tightening national border controls as long as so many migrants were at the EU's external borders, both leaders said their meeting was not an effort to weaken Merkel or her government.

Croatia's government has proposed to Parliament to amend a law that would allow the army to be deployed to the country's borders to tackle the migration crisis.

Croatia's Prime Minister Tihomir Oreskovic said Friday the measure would not mean that the army would be deployed "tomorrow, but would leave the possibility open."

He says Croatia's neighbor Slovenia has already deployed its army to the border, while Serbia is considering the option.

The Balkan countries and Austria have recently introduced tight restrictions to stem the flow of migrants. That has resulted in thousands of refugees and other migrants being stranded in Greece on the border with Macedonia.

According to the proposed amendment, Croatia's army would help the police in patrolling the borders.

Opposition parties denounced the government's plans, saying the deployment of the army would raise tensions among Balkan countries that are still reeling from the wars in the 1990s.

More than 1.2 million people applied for asylum for the first time in the European Union last year, more than double the number in 2014.

The EU's statistics agency said Friday that most people applying in the 28 EU countries were Syrian, Iraqi or Afghan nationals. It said 362,800 Syrians applied for asylum.

More than a third — 441,800 people — applied for the first time in Germany. In per-capita terms, the most people applied in Hungary, Sweden, Austria and Finland.

Only 140 people sought asylum in Croatia.

Eurostat's figures concern only first-time applicants in 2015. Almost half a million asylum applications were still being processed at the end of 2014.