Europe still has not decided how it should respond… The number of migrants who have arrived by the Mediterranean this year has exceeded 225,000, according to the UN. Then they move overland.
This Thursday in Vienna, senior officials of the Balkan countries that are not part of the European Union will meet to discuss the rush of migrants crossing their territory. They met one year ago in Berlin, also under greatly increased pressure to respond.
According to EU border agency Frontex, more than 100,000 migrants entered the EU via the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, Albania, Kosovo, Montenegro, Serbia, and Bosnia-Herzegovina between January and July 2015 — more than ten times the number for the same period in 2014.
The number of asylum requests Vienna got in the first half of this year, more than 28,000, exceeded its 2014 total. Thursday’s summit host Austria, which borders Hungary and fellow “front line” state Italy, will present a five-point crisis strategy.
As the condit
