Eastern Europe rejected migrant quotas on Friday despite German warnings over the “biggest challenge” in European Union (EU) history, amid disturbing footage of refugees in Hungary being fed “like animals”.
German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier met counterparts from the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, and Slovakia in Prague, but failed to convince them to accept an EU plan to distribute 160,000 refugees around the continent.
“We’re convinced that as countries we should keep control over the number of those we are able to accept,” said Czech Foreign Minister Lubomir Zaoralek after the meeting.
Record numbers of people, many of them fleeing war and conflict, continued to pour into Europe, with around 7,600 entering Macedonia in the last 24 hours.
Faced with the with the surge, Germany says that the EU plan does not go far enough, but Chancellor Angela Merkel has few options for convincing countries that refuse to take part, having already rejected punitive measures such as cutting EU subsidies.
Hungary’s response has been to send more troops to help build a four-metre fence along its southern border, and images from inside its controversial Roszke holding camp showed families being fed “like animals in a pen,” with hungry women and children caught in a scrum as police threw sandwiches at them.