Serbia, Macedonia call at Balkans summit for EU action on migrants

Serbia and Macedonia’s foreign ministers called for EU action on Europe’s migrant crisis at a summit Thursday of leaders from the western Balkans, attended by German Chancellor Angela Merkel.

Both have become major transit countries for tens of thousands of migrants trying to reach the European Union in recent months, with Macedonia last week forced to declare a state of emergency.

“We are faced with the biggest refugee crisis since World War II. It is a true migration of peoples and Serbia is a transit country,” Serbia’s Ivica Dacic told a news conference at the event in Vienna.

“This is a problem of the European Union and we (the transit countries) are expected to come up with an action plan,” he said.

“I think the European Union has to come up with a plan first,” he said. “I have to be very direct here. We are bearing the brunt of the problem.”

This was echoed by Nikola Poposki, his counterpart from Macedonia, which he said is currently having to deal with 3,000 migrants arriving every day from EU member Greece.

“We are not going to do the job with the 90,000 euros ($101,000) that we have received so far and we are probably not going to reach the objective with the one million euros that have been announced,” he said.

“Unless we have a European answer to this issue, none of us should be under any illusion that this will be solved,” Poposki said.

“Now we will need to act, and probably with this Vienna conference we can… come to a solution which is a European one.”