Slovakian PM: Refugee Quotas Are 'Finished'

(Newsweek) The current holder of the EU’s rotating presidency has slammed plans for permanent refugee quotas that would distribute asylum seekers more evenly across the bloc.

Slovakia’s Prime Minister Robert Fico said Wednesday that: “Quotas today clearly divide the EU, therefore I think they are politically finished,” The Times reported.

Fico was speaking ahead of a referendum on Sunday in Hungary, where voters are expected to reject EU plans for refugee quotas. The “illiberal” Hungarian government, led by Viktor Orban, has campaigned vigorously against the quotas, and open asylum policies more generally.

Despite a struggle to implement a temporary relocation scheme, which since last year has only seen 5,595 people relocated from landing points in Greece and Italy out of a target 106,000, the European Commission wants to introduce some form of permanent quota system. The commission is set to release an updated proposal on Wednesday.

Under the current EU “Dublin regulation” refugee rules, asylum seekers are required to seek sanctuary in the first safe country they reach and there is no system for redistributing them afterwards.

This has led to massive pressure on states like Greece and Italy, and others near the EU’s southern and Eastern borders, as huge numbers of refugees have arrived from Africa and the Middle East since 2014.

But quotas are felt by some states to be an over-reach of Brussels’ power because it requires national governments to admit people that they otherwise may not have done.

Fico said: “Whoever wants to divide Europe, let them put quotas on the table, who wants to unite Europe, let them come up with a different concept of fight against illegal migration.”

Polish, Slovakia say will not accept Muslim migrants after Paris attacks

Polish and Slovak officials put the kibosh on EU Muslim migrant relocation plan after Paris attacks. EU officials pretend terror attack was no big deal and Europe should proceed with the absorbing the Muslim tsunami.

(Reuters) European Union countries should not give in to base reactions of rejecting refugees after the Paris attacks because the shooters were criminals, not asylum seekers, European Commission head Jean-Claude Juncker said on Sunday.

Top Polish and Slovak officials have poured cold water on the EU refugee relocation plan right after the attacks late on Friday that killed 129 people, saying the violence underlined the concerns of Europeans about taking in Muslim refugees.

"We should not mix the different categories of people coming to Europe," Juncker told a news conference on the sidelines of a G20 summit of world leaders in the Turkish coastal province of Antalya.

One of the attackers in Paris has been identified as having entered the EU through the Greek island of Leros on Oct. 3, 2015, with other refugees. On entering, he was identified and fingerprinted according to EU rules.

"The one responsible for the attacks in Paris... he is a criminal and not a refugee and not an asylum seeker," Juncker said.

"I would invite those in Europe who try to change the migration agenda we have adopted -- I would like to remind them to be serious about this and not to give in to these basic reactions that I do not like," Juncker said.

Poland's new Europe minister Konrad Szymanski said on Saturday his incoming government did not agree with Poland's commitment to accept its share of an EU-wide relocation of immigrants, and now, "in the face of the tragic acts in Paris, we do not see the political possibilities to implement (this)."

On Saturday Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico said: "We have been saying that there are enormous security risks linked to migration. Hopefully, some people will open their eyes now."

But Juncker said there was no need to change Europe's plan to relocate 160,000 refugees around Europe, as agreed earlier.

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Islamic invasion of Europe update (September 14, 2015)

Refuge #Europe on the way to becoming #Refugees | #ui pic.twitter.com/rnk4g4aVpR

— United Infidels #ui (@United_Infidels) September 14, 2015

Muslim invaders cross through a hole in a barbed-wire fence at the Hungarian-Serbian border near Röszke.

Slovakia putting temporary border controls in place

BRATISLAVA (Reuters) - Slovakia has introduced temporary controls on its borders with Hungary and Austria, the Interior Ministry said on Monday after Germany introduced similar measures over the weekend to cope with thousands of asylum seekers arriving every day.

The ministry said it would strengthen its border forces with an additional 220 police officers. It said it was monitoring the situation and coordinating with authorities in neighboring Austria, Hungary and the Czech Republic.

UN: Hungary taking migrants straight to Austrian border

Budapest (AFP) - Hungary has effectively stopped registering thousands of migrants crossing the border from Serbia and is transporting them straight to the Austrian frontier, the UN refugee agency said Monday.

"Our information is that special trains are taking migrants from Roszke (train) station direct without stopping to the Austrian border," Erno Simon, UNHCR Regional Representative for Central Europe, told AFP.

He said this was "approximately a four-hour journey, yesterday (Sunday) three such trains left carrying at least 2,000 people. During the night our colleagues saw police waking people up at the border collection point."

EU on collision course over plans to share out migrants

BRUSSELS (Reuters) - European Union members were on collision course on Monday over proposals to distribute asylum-seekers across the continent, a plan back by safe-haven Germany but resisted by several ex-Communist states in the east.

Interior ministers will meet on Monday afternoon in an emergency council called to deal with the unprecedented influx of migrants, which has overburdened Italy, Greece and Hungary.

Diplomats said after talks in Brussels on Sunday that Hungary, Slovakia and the Czech Republic were refusing to accept the compulsory distribution of 120,000 asylum seekers - even though Hungary, which has taken in large numbers, would benefit.

Germany doing checkpoints on roads from Austria

German police say they will conduct rolling checkpoints on major roads coming from Austria in a search for asylum seekers, but will not check every vehicle and driver for passports.

Bavarian police official Mathias Knott said the controls "are flexible in terms of where and when they will be in place." Knott was speaking on the side of the major A8 highway connecting Salzburg, western Austria, with the German cities of Munich and Stuttgart.

Knott said police would vary their checkpoints depending on where large numbers of asylum seekers are expected to be crossing by road.

On the German side of the A8 motorway border crossing, officers placed warning lights and cones on the road and selected individual vehicles to be searched. The extra security backed up traffic for three kilometers (two miles) on the Austrian side of the border.

On trains inbound from Austria, meanwhile, German police were removing asylum seekers from the trains at the first German station reached and placing them on buses bound for refugee accommodation nationwide.

BREAKING: Hungarian police block main migrant crossing point from Serbia http://t.co/NbbaJ6tros pic.twitter.com/tJSSS61HwK

— BNO News (@BNONews) September 14, 2015

Hungarian police block key crossing for migrants

Dozens of Hungarian police have moved onto the rail line near Roszke that has been migrants' major border crossing point, getting ready to close the remaining gap in the country's 110-mile (177-kilometer) border fence.

Hundreds of migrants seeking to enter Hungary along the rail line have been halted in their tracks as engineers on a truck string barbed wire along steel fence posts. A police helicopter is hovering overhead.

Police are telling migrants to head through farm fields to Hungary's nearest approved border crossing, a road 2 kilometers (1 mile) to the west.

Police say they plan to block the rail line itself later with a train cargo container covered with seven coils of razor wire.

EU nations agree to share 32,000 refugees, another 120,000 under discussion

European Union nations have agreed on an initial relocation of some 32,000 refugees away from Italy and Greece to other nations in the bloc.

The total still stops short of the 40,000 initially sought, and is only a small part of the relocation of another 120,000 refugees under discussion Monday at an extraordinary meeting of EU interior ministers in Brussels.

Foreign Minister Jean Asselborn of Luxembourg said the first relocations could start "quickly." The EU nations had already agreed in principle on the number last July.

The ministers also agreed the nations taking on the burden of relocation would receive a lump sum of 6,000 euros ($6,750) per refugee.

Poland stands ready to impose border controls

WARSAW - Poland is ready to impose controls at its borders with other European Union members in case of any threats to border security, Prime Minister Ewa Kopacz said on Monday.

She also said she told European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker that Poland would not agree automatic quotas for accepting migrants and that Warsaw demands a strengthening of controls at EU's external borders.

"As soon as I receive (any) notification of any threat (to border security), Poland will start controlling its borders," Kopacz told reporters. "We will accept only as many refugees as we can afford, not a single one more or less," she said.

Norway's local elections test welcome for Syrian refugees

OSLO - Norway's anti-immigration Progress Party may be facing its worst election result in 20 years in municipal voting on Monday as its hostility to Syrian refugees leaves it out of step with a more welcoming mood in the Nordic nation in the last month or so.

Progress has sought to turn the municipal election into a vote on a plan it opposes to take in 8,000 Syrian refugees by the end of 2017, arguing that locally elected politicians could simply refuse to accept refugees.

This is new central train station in Munich after the "refugees" left. Civilised bunch aren't they? pic.twitter.com/u7uEZeC9aj via @XxPLWxX

— ARnews 1936 (@ARnews1936) September 14, 2015