Migrant crisis: Thousands of new reception places agreed

 Greece will have room to welcome 50,000 more migrants by the end of the year

Greece will have room to welcome 50,000 more migrants by the end of the year

Another 100,000 spaces in refugee welcome centres will be created under a deal agreed by European leaders at an emergency summit in Brussels.

The heads of 11 EU states and three non-EU countries met to discuss how to handle growing number of migrants.

More than 9,000 migrants arrived in Greece every day last week, the highest rate so far this year.

Under the deal, Greece will open reception centres with enough room for 30,000 migrants by the end of the year.

The UN’s refugee body, the UNHCR, will provide another 20,000 spaces in the same time.

It will also add reception centres with another 50,000 spaces in Balkan countries, which are the most popular routes north for migrants looking to travel north to Germany and Scandinavia.

Smaller countries along the Balkan route say their resources are stretched by the number of people arriving.

Bottlenecks have also been exacerbated in part by Hungary closing its borders with Serbia and Croatia, forcing migrants to seek alternative routes north.

Their journeys have been aided by governments who have helped them move to camps or on to the next border.

Before the talks, Croatian Prime Minister Zoran Milanovic dismissed requests to stop moving migrants on.

“That is impossible, whoever wrote this does not understand how things work and must have just woken up from a months-long sleep,” he said.

“Waving them through has to be stopped and that is what is going to happen,” European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker said after the summit.

BBC

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