Record numbers of migrants fleeing violence and poverty in countries such as Syria, Afghanistan and Eritrea are trying to reach Europe this year, despite the risks of perilous sea crossings and little humanitarian assistance. Here are the latest developments Monday:
___
AUSTRIA: Austria stepped up inspections at its Hungarian border after 71 migrants apparently suffocated in one. The inspections created a massive, 30-kilometer (18 1/2-mile) traffic jam on the main Budapest-Vienna highway. In neighboring Germany, the state government in Bavaria said it also had launched special traffic checks on highways near the border with Austria.
___
GREECE: Greece’s coast guard said it had picked up nearly 2,500 migrants in search and rescue operations since Friday, part of a relentless flow of people seeking the safety of Europe after facing war and poverty in the Middle East, Africa and Asia. The coast guard said 2,492 people were rescued in 70 operations off the eastern islands of Lesbos, Chios, Samos, Agathonissi, Farmakonissi, Kos and Symi.
___
FRANCE: A top EU official acknowledged that European countries have acted too slowly to handle the huge waves of migrants, and said the bloc must work faster to set up special migrant processing centers in Greece and Italy. The “hot spot” centers are designed to quickly identify those in need of protection and distinguish them from migrants fleeing poverty.
___
GERMANY: Chancellor Angela Merkel encouraged European Union nations to stop trading insults and do more to share the responsibility for refugees seeking asylum. “There’s no point in publicly calling each other names,” Merkel said. Germany has taken more asylum-seekers than any other EU country and Merkel pressed anew for quotas to spread the migrants among the 28-nation bloc.
___
SLOVAKIA: Slovakia’s prime minister said his country “will never agree” with a system that would require European Union members to take set numbers of refugees arriving in the EU. Prime Minister Robert Fico rejected criticism from the West that EU members in Central Europe are not sharing enough of the burden. Slovakia, the Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland are among EU members that blocked the plan to set fixed numbers.
___
FRANCE: European authorities are giving France an extra 5 million euros to aid migrants who have clustered in the port city of Calais in hopes of sneaking across the Channel to Britain. European Commission Vice President Frans Timmermans said the funding was aimed at creating a new camp to aid the some 1,500 migrants from Sudan, Eritrea and elsewhere who are living in unsanitary makeshift conditions.
___
NORWAY: A trickle of asylum seeker from Syria and the Mediterranean region are taking a more roundabout route into Europe: through Russia to a remote Arctic border post in Norway. Police said 151 people have crossed the border this year, some of them by bicycle. The border post in the northeastern Norwegian town of Kirkenes, 2,500 kilometers (1,550 miles) from Oslo, is not open to pedestrians.
