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Hundreds of migrants have been protesting outside a major railway station in the Hungarian capital after police sealed off the terminal to stop them travelling through the EU.
Crowds of people chanted “Germany” and waved train tickets after being forced to leave Keleti station in Budapest.
Officials said Hungary was trying to restore order and enforce EU rules.
Austrian police said 3,650 migrants arrived in Vienna from Hungary on Monday, with most heading for Germany.
Hungarian officials had earlier appeared to abandon efforts to register them under EU rules, which mean they should seek asylum in the first EU country they enter.
Chaotic scenes
About 1,000 migrants congregated outside Keleti station, in the east of the city, as it was evacuated on Tuesday.
It was closed briefly and public announcements said no trains would be leaving.
But it soon reopened to non-migrant passengers, with lines of police preventing migrants from entering the main entrance.
Migrants wave their train tickets outside Keleti station
Hungarian police briefly closed Keleti station
The move came amid chaotic scenes after hundreds of migrants had tried to board services to Austria and Germany.
Some complained that they had paid hundreds of euros for tickets, and called for the station to be reopened so that they could continue their journey.
The number of migrants entering Europe has reached record levels, with 107,500 arriving in July alone.
Germany expects to take in 800,000 migrants this year – four times last year’s total.
Many of the migrants have been waiting at Keleti (east) station for days. Reporters said they are mainly Syrians, Afghans and Eritreans.
Under the EU’s Dublin Regulation, asylum seekers must register in the first EU member state in which they arrive. However, the protocol has been widely abused, as many of those who reached Hungary first arrived in Greece, where they failed to claim asylum.
The Berlin government has already said it is suspending the Dublin rule for Syrians who have travelled to Germany.
Some 1,400 people had arrived in Munich by Tuesday morning, after travelling through Austria, and more were due.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel on Monday called for greater EU co-operation on the issue and implicitly called for other countries to welcome more refugees.
“If Europe fails on the question of refugees, then it won’t be the Europe we wished for,” she said.
The risks for migrants travelling through Europe were highlighted last week by the deaths of 71 people, who were found in a lorry that had travelled to Austria from Budapest.
Most of the dead were thought to be Syrians fleeing the country’s civil war.
Hundreds more people drowned in the Mediterranean last week while trying to reach Europe from Libya.
10 days of the migrant crisis
- Crowds of migrants rush at Macedonian border forces in an attempt to enter from Greece
- Hundreds of people are feared dead after two boats carrying about 500 migrants sink in the Mediterranean, off Libya; more than 300,000 migrants have risked their lives trying to cross the Mediterranean this year, according to the UN
- A lorry abandoned near Parndorf in Austria is found to have 71 dead people inside, including four children
- Twenty-six migrants are rescued from a van in Austria, near the border with Germany.
Why is EU struggling with migrants and asylum?
BBC