Illegal immigration

Europe needs to find a solution to the migrant crisis or risk losing its identity, Italy's Matteo Renzi warned June 24 ahead of a key EU summit, as tensions rose over the asylum issue.

Police found some 160 migrants who were hidden in a house used as the gang's base during the raid in the village of Vaksince, near Macedonia's northern border with Serbia, on Saturday.

Greek coast guard officers on Saturday intercepted 44 illegal migrants on a boat east of the northern Aegean island of Samothrace.

"Serbia knew about plans to build border fence"

Serbia was familiar with all the options, including the construction of a border fence to prevent the flow of illegal immigrants, say Hungarian authorities.

Building a fence along the Hungarian-Serbian border cannot stop the wave of illegal immigrants, but only slow it down, Rados Djurovic said on Wednesday.

Hundreds of third country nationals continued, on a daily basis, to land or reach close enough to several of Greece’s eastern Aegean islands in order to attract the attention of the coast guard and be escorted to Greek territory.

Lesvos Mayor Spyros Galinos wrote to the government on Wednesday to warn that authorities on the eastern Aegean island are struggling to deal with the influx of undocumented migrants and refugees and expressing concern that locals may soon start reacting against the situation.

Another 758 foreign nationals illegally made their way to the eastern Aegean island of Mytilene in just the past 24 hours, authorities on the island reported.

Bulgaria, Greece and Turkey, facing a surge in illegal migration, have signed an agreement to set up a joint contact centre for border and customs control, the Interior Ministry in Sofia announced on Monday.

The bureau in Attica responsible for processing asylum applications will not be able to operate properly over the coming days due to staff shortages, authorities said Monday.