Refugees

Zlatko Sokolar, head of the Croatian border administration, said on Monday that Croatia is prepared for a refugee influx and has dispatched 6,000 police to safeguard the borders.

Germany has decided to reintroduce border controls along its border with Austria, authorities say.

The measure comes less than a day after the city of Munich, which has given shelter to thousands of migrants from the Middle East, said it could not cope with the flow of asylum seekers who entered the country in a matter of hours.

AFP is reporting that "disturbing footage emerged of the way migrants are being treated inside Hungary's main refugee camp on the border with Serbia."

The images "showing families fed like animals in a pen" were shot secretly by an Austrian volunteer who visited the Roszke camp on Wednesday, according to the agency.

Bulgaria is ranking among worst destinations for asylum seekers in a handbook, with some saying "xenophobia and Islamophobia are widespread", Deutsche Welle has noted.

In a text titled Why do so many refugees avoid Bulgaria?, Alexander Andreev and Tatiana Vaksberg have given several examples of this.

As we have written in a past article, German Chancellor Angela Merkel has managed to gain a spot in the hearts of many refugees entering Germany.

A rally voicing solidarity with migrants seeking asylum in Europe is due this Saturday, September 12, in Bulgaria's capital Sofia, its organizers have said.

Jean-Claude Juncker, President of the European Commission, on Wednesday proposed a new plan for accepting 160,000 refugees in the EU and at the same time proposed that non-EU countries in the Western Balkans be put on a list of safe countries.

The proposition presented to the European Parliament adds another 40,000 to an existing plan for quotas set in May.

The United Nations refugee agency on Tuesday called on Hungary to improve the registration process and reception conditions for asylum-seekers.

It also called on Hungarian authorities to implement the recently adopted national legislation in accordance with the EU and international law and to differentiate those in need of international protection from those who are not in need.

The European Commission has set new national quotas for refugees, according to which Germany will take in 40,000, and France 30,000 people.

This is the number of refugees that will be accepted by these two countries out of the 160,000 asylum seekers that will be transferred from Italy, Greece, and Hungary, the El Pais daily said in learned in Brussels on Monday.

Germany on Monday announced that Kosovo, Albania or Montenegro would be classified as "safe countries of origin", which means that people who come to Germany from those countries will be sent back more quickly, as few will be able to obtain asylum status.