Macedonia Mulls Hungarian-Style Border Fence

Macedonia is considering building a Hungarian-style fence on its southern border with Greece to curb an expected fresh inflow of refugees from the Middle East and Africa, Foreign Minister Nikola Poposki was quoted as saying on Thursday.

Macedonia will probably need "some kind of a physical defence" on its southern border, Poposki said in an interview with the Hungarian business weekly Figyelo.

"If we take seriously what Europe is asking us to do, we will need that. Either soldiers or a fence or a combination of the two," Poposki said. He added that even a fence and soldiers would not be a long-term solution for the refugee crisis, however.

Ever since the number of refugees crossing the border surged from several hundred per day to several thousand in mid-August, Macedonia has complained of lack of help from the EU to tackle the problem.

In the past two weeks, the number of people entering has risen to 5,000 and even 7,000 per day. Macedonia is purely a transit route for these Syrians and others who seek to continue their journey across Serbia to Hungary and then Western Europe, preferably Germany.

However, this is the first time that a Macedonian official has mentioned building a fence, a move for which Hungary has been criticised.

Hungary is constructing a 175 km-long fence along its border with Serbia aimed at curbing the entry of migrants.

In his interview Poposki said Macedonia is doing its best to tackle the inflow of migrants but is being criticized only for following EU instructions.

Seeming to echo Hungarian complaints, he said that whenever Macedonia takes steps to control the border and stop people, as "our European partners ask of us", it is subjected to "negative...