EU Leaders Criticize Each Other on Refugees

At a hastily called emergency summit in Brussels, 11 EU and Balkan leaders were especially looking to shore up Greece’s porous border with Turkey and slow the flow of people heading north toward the European Union’s heartland.

“Extraordinary times demand extraordinary measures,” German Chancellor Angela Merkel said, The Associated Press reported.

Nine days after Hungary’s move to seal its southern border drove unprecedented migrant flows into tiny Slovenia, Prime Minister Miro Cerar sent out a dramatic call to fellow central and eastern leaders in Brussels for emergency talks.

“If we don’t find a solution today, if we don’t do everything we can today, then it is the end of the European Union as such,” Cerar said.

“If we don’t deliver concrete action, I believe Europe will start falling apart,” he told reporters.

Fleeing war to seek a new life in Germany and northern Europe, refugees have continued to come through the western Balkans and have shifted west into Slovenia after Hungary’s border fencing was completed. Since Oct. 17., more than 62,000 migrants have arrived in Slovenia, with some 14,000 still passing through the country on Sunday.

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban was unrepentant, describing his country as an “observer” in the crisis since the border closures and saying he had no advice to give other leaders.

But such apparent detachment was not shared by many at the meeting. Macedonian President Gjorge Ivanov quoted US independence hero Benjamin Franklin as saying: “If we don’t stick together we will hang separately.”

With winter approaching, Jean-Claude Juncker, the EU’s chief executive, called the leaders of Austria, Bulgaria, Croatia, Macedonia, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Romania, Serbia and Slovenia to Brussels to seek a common approach.

Cerar said Croatia, which has already seen some 230,000 migrants pass through since mid-September, was still waiving migrants through into Slovenia without alerting Slovenia authorities.

Merkel cautioned that ultimately there would be no solution without Turkey, which was not invited to the meeting.

“We will not solve the refugee problem completely, we need, among other things, further talks with Turkey for that,” Merkel said. “Only with Turkey we can switch illegality to legality. It is very important that the [European] Commission discusses further the migration agenda with Turkey,” she said.

Brussels has presented Ankara with a so-called action plan in which Turkey receives EU funding to absorb more migrants fleeing Syria in return for easier travel rules to Europe and a broadening of long-running talks on eventual Turkish membership of the bloc.

Many say the EU needs to get control of the refugee flow at the bloc’s external border between EU-member Greece and Turkey. Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras commented that having a summit on the migrant crisis was of little use if Turkey was not invited.

Serbian Prime Minister Aleksandar Vucic said Serbia would not “put up any walls” like Hungary’s new razor wire-topped border fences.

Croatian Prime Minister Zoran Milanovic asked of fellow EU nation Greece: “Why doesn’t Greece control its maritime half with Turkey?”

Greece, criticized for being ill-prepared as a first EU buffer against the migrants, decried the lack of European solidarity.

“Till today, it was difficult to find a solution, because a series of countries adopt a stance, ‘Not in my backyard,’” Tsipras said

In a reminder of the dangers, Greece’s coast guard said a woman and two young children drowned and seven other people were missing after their boat smashed into rocks off the island of Lesbos amid turbulent seas. Fifty-three others were rescued.