WARSAW, Poland (AP) – The latest news as migrants fleeing war or seeking a better life make their way across Europe by the tens of thousands. All times local.
2:10 p.m.
Germany’s governing coalition is arguing over whether to set up “transit zones” on the country’s border to quickly weed out migrants who have no realistic chance of winning asylum.
Chancellor Angela Merkel’s conservative bloc is pushing the idea. It would entail extending to Germany’s land borders a system that already exists at its airports, where migrants who arrive from countries considered safe or without papers can be held while asylum applications are processed quickly.
Merkel says the idea could help. But it remains unclear how the zones would work and her center-left coalition partners are deeply skeptical.
Vice Chancellor Sigmar Gabriel said Wednesday that his Social Democrats wouldn’t back a system that entails people being interned at the border.
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2 p.m.
Croatia’s conservative president says her country might need to build a fence on its border to stop the migrant influx just as neighboring Hungary has done.
President Kolinda Grabar Kitarovic tells the Jutarnji List daily on Wednesday that “I think some kind of a fence or physical barrier will be needed in the future.”
She adds “I would like to avoid that, but I don’t see how else we can protect ourselves,” particularly if neighboring countries close their borders with Croatia.
Hungary has sealed its border with Serbia and threatened to do the same with Croatia because of the tens of thousands of migrants crossing through to go to Western Europe. Croatia’s liberal government has ruled out building a fence.
More than 170,000 asylum-seekers have passed through Croatia since mid-September.
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1:50 p.m.
European Union nations are failing to live up to their pledges to provide more funds and experts to help cope with Europe’s refugee emergency.
European Commission Vice-President Frans Timmermans said Wednesday “noble words need to be followed by concrete actions” and that commitments are “far below what is required.”
The EU’s border agency and asylum office have appealed for around 1,000 more officers, while the executive Commission has requested hundreds of millions of euros in funding.
In the three weeks since the leaders’ last emergency summit on immigration, around 12 of the 28 EU nations have offered 130 personnel. Just three states have pledged a total of 12 million euros ($13.7 million) to a migration fund that is aiming to reach 1.8 billion euros ($2 billion).
Timmerman timed his appeal on the eve of another EU summit in Brussels.
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1:20 p.m.
Former Polish prime minister Jaroslaw Kaczynski says migrants who have arrived recently in Europe are carrying diseases that could hurt the local populations.
The words sparked a sharp rebuke on Wednesday from a left-wing politician, Janusz Palikot, who slammed Kaczynski’s words as racist language that Adolf Hitler “would not be ashamed of.”
Kaczynski, whose opposition Law and Justice party is expected to win parliamentary elections on Oct. 25, told voters Tuesday in Makow Mazowiecki that: “There are already signs of the emergence of very dangerous diseases which haven’t been seen in Europe for a long time: cholera on Greek islands; dysentery in Vienna; various types of parasites, protozoa, which aren’t dangerous in the organisms of these people, but which could be dangerous here.”