Refugees head for Macedonia after arriving at the refugee camp near Idomeni in northern Greece. Photo / AP
Refugees head for Macedonia after arriving at the refugee camp near Idomeni in northern Greece. Photo / AP
EU begins action against member states for failing to register migrants to help stem refugee tide
Asylum claims in Europe surged to more than 400,000 within three months over the northern summer, figures showed yesterday.
The European Union has begun legal action against a string of countries for failing to register migrants and thereby help halt the influx.
Some 413,800 people applied for asylum in the EU in the three months between June and September, the peak of the migration crisis. The figure was more than double that of the previous three months and a fourfold increase since the beginning of last year.
A third of the applicants were Syrians, 14 per cent Afghanis and 10 per cent Iraqis. But the figures also included 26,000 Albanians - a country which hopes to join the EU - 21,000 Pakistanis and 11,175 Nigerians, one of the fastest growing states in Africa.
The EU yesterday threatened to take Greece, Croatia and Italy to court for failing to fingerprint asylum seekers within three days of landing in their country, a process designed to prevent them from heading onward into central Europe and Germany.
Hungary, which has taken a hard line against migrants and was the first to build a border fence to halt the influx, was threatened with action over allegations it had failed to respect the rights of failed asylum seekers. According to the EU, Budapest has ignored rules which say that a failed asylum seeker cannot be deported during an appeal. Hungary's new fast-track deportation regime also ignores migrants' rights to an interpreter and judicial decisions were being made by unqualified secretaries, the commission said.
Greek riot police cross the tracks at Idomeni railway station after a protest by stranded migrants had severed the key Greek freight train link with northern Europe. Photo / AP
The figures released yesterday show that Hungary, whose government's stance is regarded in Brussels as populist, has born the brunt of the crisis. Action was also threatened against Greece and Malta over rules on the standards of reception centres for migrants.
In total, Brussels has threatened more than 82 legal actions against member states - a sign of how the asylum rules have been disregarded.
The Council of Europe, which sits outside the EU, said the continent's "handling of the arrivals of migrants and asylum-seekers has been simply disastrous".
"Some countries toughened their asylum and immigration legislation, sometimes making it a crime to enter and stay irregularly," said Nils Muiznieks, the commissioner for human rights. "Others have erected fences or detained migrants or asylum-seekers in prison-like structures.
"This approach is wrong and causes unnecessary suffering to people, many of whom are children, who have already been through very traumatising experiences and taken perilous routes in search of protection."
Meanwhile, French plans to install airport-style security gates at some train stations after last summer's thwarted gun attack on a cross-border train will be undermined because Germany and Holland have no plans to do the same.
The gates are being introduced after a man travelling from Amsterdam to Paris tried to open fire as the train was passing through Pas-de-Calais.
