Eastern European ministers gathering Monday will once again voice their opposition to compulsory migrant quotas, as countries creaking under the strain of a steady stream of refugees struggle to agree on common action.
Thousands of migrants and refugees fleeing conflict and poverty continued their arduous trek across Europe over a weekend marked by tragedy after at least 13 adults and children drowned when the inflatable dinghy carrying them from Turkey to Greece collided with a ship.
Some have already made it across to western Europe, with Austria registering some 22,700 arrivals over the past few days, but others have resorted to desperate measures after being stopped in their tracks by countries reluctant to let them through.
After spending the night camped on the hard shoulder of a motorway outside Istanbul, a few hundred mostly Syrian refugees were stopped by police Monday after walking along the emergency lane in the midst of snarling morning traffic.
They had been blocked for the past week at Istanbul’s main bus station, and were trying to reach Edirne in the northwest, which has become a new rallying point for migrants trying to reach Europe.
Monday’s talks in Prague between the foreign ministers of the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Slovakia and Latvia with their counterpart from Luxembourg, which holds the EU presidency, will try to address the deep divide between European countries over how to share out some 120,000 refugees.
“We will talk… about how to solve the issue of the migrants, how Europe should protect its borders, and how to distinguish refugees from economic migrants,” Polish Foreign Minister Grzegorz Schetyna said Sunday.
He noted that the so-called Visegrad states are still opposed to Brussels’ proposed quota system to distribute migrants arriving in Europe.
“Each country must be able to decide how many migrants it can receive. Imposing a quota would be, in my view, against European principles.”
– Take refugees from crisis regions? –
EU interior ministers will also meet on Tuesday, in the hope that progress will be made by the time a bloc-wide emergency summit opens Wednesday on how to resolve the continent’s worst migration crisis since World War II.
More than 2,800 people have lost their lives among the nearly half a million who have braved dangerous trips across the Mediterranean to reach Europe so far this year, according to the International Organization for Migration.
In the latest weekend tragedy, the dinghy was carrying at least 46 migrants to Lesbos, one of several Greek islands inundated in recent months by thousands of people arriving from Syria, Afghanistan and elsewhere in the Middle East and South Asia.
A survivor whose name was given as Haseen told Greek state news agency ANA: “It was dark, we saw the ship bearing down on us. We tried to signal with flashlights and mobile phones but they did not see us.”
Thrown overboard, the passengers fought to keep their heads above water. “We lost the children. We could not see them in the dark,” Haseen said.
On Monday, Germany’s interior minister urged Europe to pick up refugees directly from crisis regions, to help them bypass traffickers who charge huge sums for dangerous journeys to the continent.
“I suggest we agree on a generous quota in which we take refugees from crisis regions to Europe without allowing people smugglers to profit from it,” Thomas de Maiziere told reporters in Berlin.
– Refugees caught in EU rift –
The migration crisis has caused a deep rift between EU members over how to deal with the new arrivals.
Countries like Germany and France insist on establishing compulsory quotas to share out the refugees, while other member states have taken a hard line and refuse.
Hungary sealed off its border with Serbia last week with a razor-wire barrier, displacing the flow of refugees to neighbouring Croatia, which soon became overwhelmed and closed seven of its eight crossing points with Serbia.
Over the weekend, though, Budapest and Zagreb appeared to have coordinated efforts to ferry the huge crowds through and out of their territory as quickly as possible, with Croatia pushing migrants onto neighbouring Hungary, which in turn put them onto buses or trains to Austria.
Many refugees trying to reach the EU overland through northwestern Turkey, meanwhile, have been blocked in their tracks as neighbouring Greece and Bulgaria resist taking them in.
“We are ready to send people to countries who open their doors to them, but unfortunately no country has given a favourable response so far,” Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu tweeted.