Austria smuggler crackdown as Europe divided over migrant crisis
Austria's tightened security followed the discovery of 71 dead migrants, four of them children
VIENNA (AFP) - The hunt for people smugglers led to a security crackdown and massive tailbacks on Austria s border with Hungary on Monday, as Europe struggled to present a united front on the huge influx of migrants and refugees.
Austria s tightened security followed the discovery of 71 dead migrants, four of them children, in an abandoned lorry near the border with Hungary last week.
Since the checks on vehicles began late on Sunday, more than 200 migrants have been picked up and five suspected people smugglers arrested.
Trains carrying hundreds of migrants arrived in Vienna from Budapest, police said late Monday, after they had been stopped at the Austrian border with Hungary for several hours.
After arriving at Vienna s Westbahnhof, many of the migrants, most of them without visas, boarded a train to Salzburg, while others climbed on to another one headed for Munich, with police looking on, an AFP correspondent at the scene said.
"I m going to Germany!" cried one grinning migrant from Afghanistan standing by the doors of a packed train, munching on a banana and holding half a watermelon.
Much-flouted EU rules stipulate that refugees should be processed in the first country they reach, but Hungary says it cannot deal with the influx.
The chaos and piecemeal responses have been reflected across Europe as the continent struggles to cope with the biggest movement of people since World War II, with more than 300,000 arriving this year.
Most are fleeing war, persecution and hardship in the Middle East and Africa, and at least 2,500 have died trying to make the treacherous journey across the Mediterranean Sea.
Austria has called for EU funding for states refusing to take their share of migrants to be cut, in the latest sign of deepening divisions over the crisis.
- Like we are animals -
EU interior ministers will meet on September 14 in Brussels in a bid to "strengthen the European response".
"If Europe fails on the question of refugees, if this close link with universal civil rights is broken, then it won t be the Europe we wished for," said German Chancellor Angela Merkel on Monday.
She implicitly criticised countries including Slovakia that have said they would reject migrants from majority Islamic countries, saying: "if we start saying I do not want Muslims ... that cannot be good".
Her comments echoed those of French Prime Minister Manuel Valls in the French port of Calais, who said "too many countries are refusing to play their part. It goes against the European spirit and we can t accept it."
Valls said that by early 2016, France would build a new reception camp for migrants in Calais, with the help of five million euros from the European Commission.
Polish Prime Minister Ewa Kopacz said Monday the country could increase the number of refugees it is willing to accept.
The central European powerhouse of 38 million people initially agreed to accept 2,200 refugees to ease the burden on Italy and Greece but then resisted German calls for a more even distribution of asylum-seekers within the EU.
Most of the migrants land in Italy or Greece, then make for the wealthier countries of northern Europe.
"We are in a labyrinth, going from queue to queue, and here in Serbia, the police are shouting at us like we are animals," Samar, 40, from Damascus, told AFP as she waited with her two teenage boys for hours in the sun at a filthy camp in Presevo.
- Breach of Europe s values -
Transit countries in eastern Europe and the Balkans are struggling to cope.
Two weeks ago, Macedonia declared a state of emergency after a surge of people across its border with Greece.
The right-wing government in Hungary, which has seen 50,000 new arrivals this month, has laid razor wire along its border with Serbia to try keep migrants out, and is also building a four-metre (13 feet) fence to be policed by border guards and sniffer dogs.
Criticised by French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius as a breach of "Europe s common values", the barrier has also proved ineffective, with police saying 3,080 migrants crossed on Saturday, the second-highest daily total.
European Council President Donald Tusk said the EU needs "a way between the chaotic mess symbolised by the dramas in Calais... or the tragedies in the sea or recently in Austria, and drastic actions like those taken by Hungary.
While those migrant routes into Europe are now well-trodden, some people are coming up with ever-more novel methods of getting in.
A group of intrepid Syrian migrants travelled through Russia and into Norway s Arctic, some of them cycling across the border.
Norway is not a member of the European Union but belongs to the Schengen Area which allows free movement of people.
Hungary has arrested four Bulgarians and an Afghan in connection with last week s abandoned truck tragedy. Four of them pleaded not guilty during their first court appearance last week.
Inside the Hungarian-plated truck were the decomposing bodies of 59 men, eight women, a toddler and three young boys, all thought to be Syrians.
So far, the authorities have arrested 93 alleged people traffickers this year in Upper Austria state alone, but most still escape, officials said.
