Tens of thousands in limbo as Balkan route is declared ‘closed’

Balkan states are re-imposing strict border controls in a bid to close a route that more than one million migrants and refugees took to reach western Europe in the last year, throwing into limbo thousands of people caught in transit through the region.

"The Balkan refugee route is no more," Slovenian prime minister Miro Cerar declared late on Tuesday night, announcing that from midnight on Wednesday his country would seek to restore the entry rules of the EU's beleaguered Schengen zone.

Slovenia said it would admit only people with valid passports and visas, those wishing to apply for asylum in the country, and others on humanitarian grounds whose cases would be handled on an individual basis.

The mass migration of people through the Balkans towards Austria, Germany and beyond – which has seen more than 475,000 people pass through Slovenia since last October – was at an end, officials in the 2 million-strong country and across the region declared.

As expected, Slovenia's announcement triggered a "domino effect" of matching moves to the south: Croatia and Serbia said they would mimic Slovenia's restrictions, and Macedonia has not allowed migrants to enter from Greece since Monday.

The crackdown comes after the EU vowed on Monday to end a year of spiralling immigration, and mooted a one-for-one "swap" plan in which Turkey would take back illegal arrivals from Greece and the EU would admit refugees directly from Turkey.

About 36,000 migrants are now in Greece, and the largest group of about 14,000 people is living in growing squalor in a makeshift camp at Idomeni, on the border with Macedonia.

Greece is rushing to complete temporary accommodation facilities and is encouraging those at Idomeni, who include thousands of children and elderly people, to board buses to take them to better-equipped locations.

Most refuse however, and pin their hopes on a change of heart by Europe’s leaders, or on the ability of criminal gangs to smuggle them across officially closed borders, at considerable risk and a cost of many hundreds or thousands of euro.

Macedonia's foreign minister, Nikola Poposki, claimed the Idomeni camp was Greece's bid to force his country to open its border – and that it would not work.

“Putting people in tents near the Macedonian border as a way of applying pressure to re-establish the illegal flow is definitely not an answer and also not in Greece’s interest,” he said.

As border controls were tightened over the last fortnight, migrants became trapped at various points along the Balkan route, and their future is unclear.

About 1,000 people are now in a Macedonian refugee camp near its border with Serbia, and more than 400 are stranded in no man’s land between the countries – they refuse to return to Macedonia and are barred from entering Serbia.

According to the UN refugee agency, up to 2,000 migrants are stuck in Serbia and 408 people are at a transit camp in Croatia, where officials said talks were under way with Greece on how to return them there.

"This is putting into effect what is correct, and that is the end of the 'waving through' which attracted so many migrants last year and was the wrong approach," said Austrian foreign minister Sebastian Kurz.

Germany championed an "open door" policy towards refugees last August, when it temporarily waived normal asylum rules for Syrians, to help ease major bottlenecks of migrants that had formed in Hungary and elsewhere.

Many EU states now fiercely criticise Germany’s welcoming stance towards refugees, including Hungary, which on Wednesday boosted border patrols and extended a migration-related state of emergency from border areas to the entire country.