Packed trains have arrived in Austria and Germany after Hungarian police suddenly allowed migrants camped around Budapest rail stations to leave the country without visa checks.
As men, women and children – many fleeing Syria’s civil war – continued to arrive from the east, Hungarian authorities let thousands of undocumented people travel on towards Germany, the favoured destination for many. The European Union member – part of
the bloc’s passport-free Schengen zone – had previously insisted that EU rules prevented them from letting people without visas travel onwards to the west.
Frustrated refugees, entering Hungary at a rate of more than 2,000 a day during August, have set up ever-growing makeshift camps outside the two main stations in Budapest.
“Germany Yes! Hungary No! Let us leave!” chanted hundreds of mostly Syrians during weekend protests, demanding that a recent easing of asylum rules by Berlin meant they could finally go.
The Schengen agreement requires refugees to seek asylum in the first country they enter under the EU’s Dublin accord, but it emerged last week Berlin had suspended it for Syrians who were now be permitted to stay and apply for refugee status.
“First they don’t want to let us in, then they don’t want to let us leave,” a protester said in reference to the razor-wire barrier Hungary’s rightwing government has built on its southern border with Serbia to keep out refugees.
On Monday morning the police left, allowing the refugees to board westbound trains.
“I’m not going to let the train go, it’s far too full!” a shaking stationmaster shouted into his mobile phone beside one Vienna-bound train. Minutes later, after a phone call to the police, he blew the whistle and the train slowly pulled out.
Later, as the clock ticked closer to 9.10pm – the departure time of the last train – the crowd began to surge forward. A crush developed at the front and panicking parents passed toddlers overhead to aid workers, and safety.
“Children are fainting, everybody push back three steps!” an aid worker called in English and Arabic through a loudspeaker, as several dozen police moved in to hold the line.
With order momentarily restored the police stepped aside, letting hundreds rush through to the train, before moving in again to block people once the train was full.
“No more trains until the morning!” announced the aid worker to groans a few minutes later.
In line with EU rules, an Austrian police spokesman said only those who had not already requested asylum in Hungary would be allowed through, but the sheer pressure of numbers prevailed and trains were allowed to move on.
At the Vienna station where police stood by as hundred of people raced to board trains for Germany, Khalil, 33, waited with his wife and their sick baby daughter.
“Thank God nobody asked for a passport … No police, no problem,” said the English teacher from Kobani in Syria.
Khalil said he had bought train tickets in Budapest for Hamburg, northern Germany, where he felt sure of a better welcome after travelling through the Balkans and Hungary.
“Syrians call [Chancellor Angela] Merkel ‘Mama Merkel’,” he said, referring to the German leader’s relatively compassionate response to the crisis.
Late on Monday, a train from Vienna to Hamburg was met in Passau, Germany, by police wearing bullet-proof vests, according to a Reuters witness.
Police entered the train and several passengers were asked to accompany them to be registered. About 40 people were seen on the platform. Police said they would be taken to a police station for registration.
Merkel, whose country expects some 800,000 refugees this year, said earlier that the crisis could destroy the Schengen accord if other EU countries do not take a greater share.
“If we don’t succeed in fairly distributing refugees then of course the Schengen question will be on the agenda for many,” she told a news conference in Berlin. “We stand before a huge national challenge. That will be a central challenge not only for days or months but for a long period of time.”
But it is far from certain her view will prevail when EU ministers hold a crisis meeting on 14 September. Britain, which is outside the Schengen zone, has said the border-free system is part of the problem, and a bloc of central European countries plans to oppose any binding quotas.
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