Greek police remove people from border with Macedonia

Operation follows Macedonia’s decision to close frontier, leaving thousands of migrants and refugees stranded in Greece

Guardian

Greek police have started removing people from the country’s border with Macedonia after a snap decision to tighten border controls by the Balkan state left thousands stranded.

Authorities said the mostly Afghan migrants and refugees were being put on buses bound for Athens, in the south of the country, after the police operation started early on Tuesday. Journalists were not allowed to approach the area.

Police and empty buses had entered the Idomeni area before dawn. In one area seen from the Macedonian side of the border, about 600 people had been surrounded by Greek police, a witness told Reuters.



On Monday Greece made frantic appeals to Macedonia to open its frontier. By midday up to 10,000 men, women and children had been trapped in Greece, with most marooned in the north. Another 4,000, newly arrived from islands off Turkey’s Aegean coast, were stuck in Athens’s port of Piraeus.

On Tuesday morning a further 1,250 people arrived in Athens from three Greek islands. Some of them had bus tickets to Idomeni, but it was unclear if they would be permitted to travel north from Athens.

The backlog came after Macedonia refused entry to Afghan refugees, claiming it was reacting to a similar move by Serbia.

Amid rising tension and fears of the collapse of the passport-free Schengen zone,Greece lambasted the policies being pursued by countries to its north.

Speaking on state-run ERT television, the Greek migration minister, Yiannis Mouzalas, said: “Once again the European Union voted for something, it reached an agreement, but a number of countries lacking the culture of the European Union, including Austria, unfortunately violated this deal barely 10 hours after it had been reached.”

Neighbouring countries along the Balkan corridor had in turn become enmeshed in “an outburst of scaremongering”.

“The Visegrád countries have not only not accepted even one refugee; they have not sent even a blanket for a refugee,” he added, referring to the Czech Republic, Poland, Hungary and Slovakia. “Or a policeman to reinforce [EU border agency] Frontex.”

Skopje said on Monday it had tightened restrictions after Austria imposed a cap on transit and asylum applications, triggering a domino effect down the migrant trail.

As officials scrambled to find accommodation for the newcomers, Athens’s leftist-led government was engaged in desperate diplomatic efforts to ease the border controls.

Greece has become Europe’s main entry point for the vast numbers fleeing war and destitution in the Middle East, Africa and Asia. Last year, more than 800,000 people – the majority from Syria – passed through the country en route to Germany and other more prosperous EU member states.

With the pace of arrivals showing no sign of abating – a record 11,000 people were registered on Aegean islands in the space of three days last week – Athens has been in a race against the clock to improve hosting facilities including “hot spot” screening centres and camps.

Mounting questions over Turkey’s desire to stem the flow, and Greece’s ability to handle it, have fuelled fears that if nations take unilateral action to seal frontiers, hundreds of thousands will end up trapped in Europe’s most chaotic state. Battling its worst economic crisis in modern times, Athens is ill-equipped to deal with the emergency.

Highlighting the gravity of the situation, the European parliament president, Martin Schulz, warned earlier on Monday that Greece was in danger of becoming a “parking lot” for stranded refugees if a scheme to resettle thousands from Greece and Italy was not put into immediate effect. Under the plan – viscerally opposed by the Visegrád countries – a mere 200 have been relocated.

With Germany’s chancellor, Angela Merkel, under growing fire for her open door refugee policy in the wake of more than a million asylum seekers arriving last year, Berlin’s interior minister also warned that time was running out if the Schengen accord was to remain intact.

Announcing the EU had two weeks to agree on a common policy, Thomas de Maizière, Germany’s interior minister, said Turkey had to deliver on its promise to stem the influx or Schengen controls would “move borders”.