Austria suspends trains, migrants walk

Published 10:13 am Friday, September 11, 2015

VIENNA — Desperate to head west even after Austria cut the number of border trains, a trickle of migrants marching toward Vienna swelled into a torrent Friday as thousands made their way toward the city on foot.

But the Austrian capital has only been a transit point for many of those arriving over the past week. Most have gone on to Germany, which saw its efforts to get fellow European Union nations to help share the burden firmly rejected Friday by four Central European nations.

German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier had urged fellow EU nations to give more help to those seeking safety in Europe, describing the influx as “probably the biggest challenge for the European Union in its history.”

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“No single country can resolve such a challenge alone — we need European solidarity,” he told reporters in the Czech capital of Prague.

Despite his warning, he failed to persuade his Czech, Slovak, Polish and Hungarian counterparts to drop their objections to a proposed EU-wide quota system to help migrants already in the EU’s most overburdened nations. Steinmeier then left a joint news conference early, allegedly due to a busy schedule.

Germany has already seen 450,000 migrants enter the country and is expecting at least 800,000 this year, the most in Europe.

“We need to have control over how many (migrants) we are capable of accepting,” said Czech Foreign Minister Lubomir Zaoralek, who hosted the meeting.

The plan to share 120,000 refugees now in Greece, Italy and Hungary among the EU’s 28 nations was unveiled Wednesday by European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker and will be debated Oct. 8 during an emergency EU interior ministers’ meeting. An earlier plan to share 40,000 other asylum-seekers among EU nations is expected to get the ministers’ final approval on Monday.

Tens of thousands of people, many from war-torn Syria, have traveled across the eastern flank of Europe this summer, from Turkey to Greece by sea, over land in Macedonia, Serbia, Hungary and Austria. Tense bottlenecks have developed at those borders, especially since Hungary began building a fence to keep the migrants out.

Friday’s foot march began after rail traffic to Vienna from the Nickelsdorf crossing was sharply reduced due to overcrowding. Buses and taxis then were called to Nickelsdorf to take migrants to the Austrian capita, but thousands decided not to wait.

Hungarian police spokesman Helmut Marban said a “group dynamic” started, with a few people beginning to walk toward Vienna from the border, inspiring thousands of others to join them on the 40-mile (60 kilometer) trek.

Police briefly closed the A4 expressway to vehicles because of the potential dangers posed by the migrants.

The trek petered out a few hours after it began with police and emergency crews persuading those wanting to push on to the Austrian capital that there would be enough buses for them eventually.

Hans Peter Doskozil, the police chief of eastern Burgenland, said on Thursday alone 7,500 people had crossed into Austria at Nickelsdorf — a number that apparently overwhelmed the Austrian Federal Railways.

Regularly scheduled trains from Nickelsdorf continued Friday to other Austrian destinations, including Vienna, with three departures scheduled.