Hungary has blocked the main route into the country used by almost 200,000 asylum seekers this year, causing concern at the United Nations refugee agency as the migration crisis played havoc with the European Union's open-border system.
Police backed by troops stopped migrants walking into Hungary along a railway line from Serbia on Monday afternoon, as workers erected the final sections of a four-metre-high steel fence topped with razor wire along the frontier.
Scores of migrants quickly gathered at the police line as a helicopter swooped low overhead, but most soon followed police instructions to cross the border at an official entry point nearby, where they would be registered.
Officials said more than 190,000 migrants have been registered crossing into Hungary this year, but it is not clear how many avoided registration, thereby reducing the risk of being sent back to Hungary from another EU state further west.
From midnight to 4pm on Monday, 7,437 migrants entered Hungary from Serbia – beating a one-day record set on Sunday – and most were quickly put on trains and buses to the border with Austria, where security checks have been reinstated.
The 175km border fence is a key part of Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán’s crackdown on people trying to enter his country undetected, along with tough laws on illegal migration and people trafficking that come into force today.
Conflict zones
Erno Simon, a spokesman for the UN refugee agency, said each country had the right to protect its borders but warned it was “very important” that people fleeing war and persecution could find protection; most migrants now arriving in Europe are from conflict zones such as
Syria
, Afghanistan and
Iraq
.
Mr Orbán insists refugees should stay in the first safe country they reach, and claims that those who seek to reach Germany, Sweden and other wealthy EU states are seeking prosperity rather than security.
Addressing more than 850 newly graduated police officers in Budapest on Monday, Mr Orbán said they would be sent straight to the border with Serbia to “defend Hungary and Europe”.
“Hungary is a country with a thousand-year-old Christian culture. We Hungarians don’t want the worldwide movement of people to change Hungary,” he said, urging the officers to be humane but “uncompromising” in their enforcement of the new laws taking effect today.
Mr Orbán said “illegal border crossings will no longer be misdemeanours but felonies, punishable with prison terms or bans” and that “punishment for human trafficking will be so severe that it will be really deserved by those who trade on the life and fate of others”.
Germany reintroduced checks on its border with Austria on Sunday to slow the influx of refugees, and Austria mirrored that move on Monday on its frontier with Hungary, where more than 2,000 troops are being deployed.
Slovakia has sent more than 200 additional police officers to its borders with Hungary and Austria, after reinstating checks on people crossing from both countries, and Czech police also boosted their numbers on the Austrian frontier.
Temporarily suspended
The sudden moves to stiffen border controls and temporarily suspend the EU’s Schengen system of “passport-free” travel have highlighted the scale of Europe’s worst refugee crisis since the second World War.
Interior ministers from the EU’s 28 countries discussed the crisis on Monday, amid deep rancour over a German-led plan for all member states to take a quota of refugees.
Hungary and fellow central European states reject such a scheme as unworkable, and favour a focus on preventing migrants from reaching the heart of the EU by boosting security on its fringes.
