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The European Union is capable of giving shelter to a limited number of asylum seekers. Once the limit is reached, the rest will have to head back to safe countries in the Middle East, where they can live in security and without persecution,"Germany's interior minister Thomas de Maiziere said on Saturday in an interview with Germany's Der Spiegel."We cannot accept all the people who are fleeing conflict zones or poverty and want to come to Europe or Germany," he said.- The conservative minister also called for the reduction of benefits for migrants and refugees as well for the implementation of the so-called Dublin Regulation, which requires sending each person back to the first EU country that they reached.The proposals were met with disapproval from Britain and eastern European countries.
- Hungary has finished the construction of a 41-kilometer barbed wire fence along its border with Croatia to curb the influx of asylum seekers, defense ministry spokesman Attila Kovacs told AFP."The fence was finished overnight Friday," he added.The remaining border, 330 kilometers long, is situated along the hard-to-cross Drava River.
- Eight thousand asylum seekers arrived from Croatia on Friday, and the influx isn't expected to slow down soon, Hungarian senior security adviser Gyorgy Bakondi has said.
- Hungary could block Croatia's accession to the EU's passport-free Schengen zone if it fails to defend the bloc's external borders, a senior adviser to Prime Minister Viktor Orban has warned. "If Croatia puts up its hands and says, no, I don't want to defend the borders, then Hungary can only say that it isn't ready to join Schengen when the moment comes to decide,"Antal Rogan, head of Orban's political cabinet, told InfoRadio news station, according to Reuters.
- Bulgaria's security forces have detained 137 foreigners in Sofia in a sweep aimed at curbing illegal migration. The migrants and refugees, who claimed they were from Syria, were detained following an operation by the state security agency (SANS) and border police on Friday night, the interior ministry said, adding the foreigners, who were detained after checks in hostels and small hotels in the capital, would be questioned. It is yet to be determined how they entered Bulgaria and whether they should be granted refugee status.
- Around a thousand refugees are waiting for buses in the Croatian town of Tovarnik, bordering Serbia. The buses' final destination has not been disclosed by Croatian authorities.
- A five-year-old girl has drowned, and a number of other adult asylum seekers have disappeared trying to raft to Greece.Between 22 to 26 refugees and migrants were traveling on the raft that started sinking five kilometers to the north of the town of Mytilene. Thirteen people were rescued.
- The Macedonian parliament has prolonged the emergency situation regime at the border with Greece until next June, according to the Serbian PTC TV channel.The decision was taken because it's expected that asylum seekers will continue to go through the northern and southern borders of the country.Some 83,000 people have crossed the Macedonian border over the last three months, the country's police reported. However, Interior Minister Mitro Cavkov provided a figure of 300,000.
Migrants wait to enter a transit camp in Gevgelija, Macedonia, after entering the country by crossing the border with Greece. © Ognen Teofilovski / Reuters - Hungary's Defense Minister Istvan Simicsko has called up volunteer military reservists to help deal with the "mass migration crisis," state news agency MTI says, as cited by Reuters. It's been reported the decision was made at the request of the chief of the Hungarian general staff. The reservists main task is to reinforce understaffed garrisons, as many soldiers are deployed at the border.
- Source: rt.com
September 20 2015, 00:48