Röszke, Hungary | AFP | Sunday 9/13/2015 - 17:35 GMT
by Eric Randolph with Danny Kemp in Brussels
Hungary closed the main border crossing for migrants entering from Serbia on Monday as Europe's passport-free zone creaked under the reinstatement of border controls by Austria, Slovakia and Germany.
The growing tensions at the heart of the EU's flagship Schengen area ramped up the pressure on interior ministers holding emergency talks in Brussels on the unprecedented flood of people fleeing Syria and other war zones.
A day before Hungary has vowed to begin arresting illegal migrants, police fenced off a gap in the razor-wire barrier with non-EU Serbia that hardline Prime Minister Viktor Orban's government is racing to complete, leaving dozens of migrants stranded.
Most of the refugees are trying to get to economic powerhouse Germany, which on Sunday abandoned its open-arms policy and reintroduced border checks amid claims it would take in one million refugees this year.
Despite the escalating crisis and a shift in public opinion after heart-wrenching pictures of a drowned Syrian migrant child -- one of more than 2,700 people to have died crossing the Mediterranean this year -- EU ministers remained divided on a solution.
"If we do not take decisions then chaos is the consequence... there will be a domino effect and we can forget Schengen," said Luxembourg minister Jean Asselborn, who chaired the EU talks in Brussels.
The United Nations refugee agency warned the confusion surrounding border policies in Europe could leave migrants, many of whom have made gruelling treks through the continent, in "legal limbo".
- 'Like the 80s' -
At Hungary's Roszke border crossing, several dozen migrants including many children, some in pushchairs, were stuck on the Serbian side of the border, with several women crying, after police shut the border, AFP journalists saw.
They were directed to the official crossing around two kilometres (1.6 miles away) where there was a heavy police presence with helicopters overhead, a sign of the tough welcome many migrants say they face in Hungary.
Underscoring the scale of the challenge, Hungarian authorities said Monday they had registered a record 5,809 migrants the day before, amid reports Serbia might try to "push through" 30,000 people before Budapest begins imposing draconian new migrant laws from Tuesday.
Hungary is on the frontline of Europe's migrant crisis, with almost 200,000 people travelling up from Greece through the western Balkans and entering the country this year, most of them seeking to go to northern Europe.
But Hungary's neighbours are now feeling the strain, with Germany shocking the EU on Sunday when it admitted that Europe's biggest migration crisis since World War II meant it had to reinstate border controls eliminated under Schengen in the late 1990s.
Vice Chancellor Sigmar Gabriel said there were "many signs that Germany this year will take in not 800,000 refugees, as forecast by the interior ministry, but one million."
The impact was immediate. Barely five minutes after Germany reimposed the controls late Sunday, police halted three young migrants fleeing the war in Syria, asking to see their passports.
"We have been walking through Europe for 22 days," said 27-year-old Hatem Ali Ahaj, who suffers from asthma and was struggling to catch his breath.
On Monday, a queue of cars snaked one kilometre, with irate drivers including German pensioner Helmut Zimmermann complaining: "It's like being back in the 1980s."
Austria and Slovakia pounced on the U-turn by Chancellor Angela Merkel's government -- which had previously said it would throw open its doors to Syrian refugees -- to reinstate their own border checks.
"We will proceed as Germany did," Austrian Interior Minister Johanna Mikl-Leitner said in Brussels. "We will conduct these temporary border controls."
Poland said it was considering similar steps while the Netherlands said it would have "more patrols" on its frontiers.
EU states can impose temporary controls for security reasons under the Schengen treaty but there are fears the very ideal of a borderless Europe could collapse.
- 'Open your heart' -
Divisions are also rife among the ministers on a plan unveiled last week by the European Commission -- the EU's executive -- to redistribute 160,000 refugees across the continent to relieve pressure on "frontline" countries such as Italy, Greece and Hungary.
Several Eastern European states such as Hungary, the Czech Republic and Slovakia oppose compulsory quotas for relocating the refugees.
On Monday the EU ministers formally approved an initial plan to relocate 40,000 of the refugees -- a proposal which was first raised in May and then put on hold by EU leaders -- but struggled to get unanimous approval for the plan for the other 120,000.
Czech Prime Minister Bohuslav Sobotka has insisted his country would never accept compulsory quotas, saying the system "won't work", while Slovakia has warned it would try to block any such binding measures.
However the EU did approve plans for military action against people smugglers in the Mediterranean, seizing and if necessary destroying boats.
With the human side of the crisis prompting a wave of sympathy, the aunt of drowned Syrian toddler Aylan Kurdi travelled from Canada to Brussels to lobby the politicians.
"Open your heart and take action and come up with a shared plan," Teema Kurdi said.
Tragedy struck again off the coast of Greece on Sunday, with 34 more migrants -- including four babies and 11 children -- drowning when their boat capsized in high winds.
The International Organization for Migration has said that more than 430,000 people have crossed the Mediterranean to Europe this year, with 2,748 dying en route or going missing.
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