Migrants stranded as Hungary bars them from rail station

Hundreds of migrants remain stranded outside Budapest's Eastern Railway Terminus on Tuesday after police sealed off the terminal to stop them travelling through the European Union.

The migrants demonstrated outside the rail station demanding they be allowed to travel on to Germany, as EU asylum rules came close to collapse under the strain of unprecedented migration.

A Hungarian government spokesman Zoltan Kovacs, when asked why the railway terminus was closed, said Hungary was trying to enforce EU law, which requires anyone who wishes to travel within Europe to hold a valid passport and a Schengen visa.

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Migrant brothers Tawab and Taher Fasni from Afghanistan eat apples as they wait for registration after they arrived from Budapest at the train station in Munich. Photograph: Matthias Balk/AFP/Getty Images

About 1,000 people waved tickets, clapping, booing and hissing, and shouting “Germany! Germany!” outside the station. Later they sat down, staring at a police blockade erected at the entrance.

Hungarian authorities closed the train station, then reopened it but barred entry to the migrants. About 100 police in helmets and wielding batons guarded the station. Dozens of migrants who were inside were forced out.

The decision to bar the migrants from westbound trains was a reversal from the previous day, when Hungary and Austria let trainloads of undocumented migrants leave for Germany, a violation of EU rules they now have little power to enforce.

The arrival of hundreds of thousands of migrants has confounded Europe, which has eliminated border controls for travel between 26 countries of its Schengen area but requires those seeking asylum to remain in the country where they first arrive until their applications are processed.

The vast majority of refugees fleeing violence and other migrants escaping poverty first arrive on Europe’s southern and eastern edges but are determined to press on and seek asylum in richer and more generous countries further north and west.

Hungary is on a major overland transit route from the Middle East and Africa through Greece and the Balkans to Germany. More than 140,000 people have crossed into Hungary from Serbia this year alone.

European leaders want the EU to do more to organise the unprecedented influx, help separate those deserving asylum from those who can be safely sent home and share the burden of accepting them across the EU.

German chancellor Angela Merkel said refugees with valid asylum claims should be distributed among EU countries according to their capacity to host them.

For now, however, there is no mechanism in place to distribute refugees or to enforce the so-called “Dublin rules”, which require asylum seekers to apply in the first EU country where they arrive.

For Hungary, the main entry point for those arriving in the EU over land across the Balkans, the crisis has prompted the government to reinforce the border with a razor wire fence and deploy thousands of extra police.

Faced with the enormous pressure of thousands upon thousands of migrants arriving in Budapest, Hungary let them board westbound trains on Monday before unexpectedly shuttering the train station again on Tuesday morning.

Marah, a 20 year-old woman from Aleppo, Syria, said her family had bought six tickets for a RailJet train that was scheduled to leave for Vienna at 9am on Tuesday.

“They should find a solution,” she told Reuters. “We are thousands here, where should we go?”

Reuters