Europe shuts up shop

Police closed a gap in the razor-wire barrier along the Hungary-Serbia border as other officers formed a human shield to block off railway tracks.

Meanwhile Hungary's transport authority said it has closed the country's airspace in a 12-mile area along the Serbian border up to a height of 4,500ft.  

The moves come after it emerged that Hungary was bracing itself for a massive surge of up to 30,000 migrants in just one day.

It comes as Serbia attempts a huge 'push through' before its neighbour introduces tough new border rules. 

A record 5,809 migrants entered Hungary in a new surge on Sunday, smashing the previous day's record of 4,330, Hungarian police have revealed.

The sharp increase came ahead of laws coming into force tomorrow under which people entering the EU country illegally can be jailed. 

And tonight, the Luxembourg government said EU interior ministers have agreed to relocate a further 120,000 asylum-seekers around the bloc.

Officials gave no detail on how the asylum-seekers would be shared out. It followed an earlier accord to redistribute 40,000 from Italy and Greece. 

Index.hu reported that Hungary's neighbour Serbia would try to 'push through' as many as 30,000 migrants on Monday before the new Hungarian laws come in to force.

Hungarian official sources are quoted as saying Serbia would speed up the provision of buses for the migrants, who enter Serbia from Macedonia after leaving Greece.

Meanwhile, European Union members are on collision course today over proposals to distribute asylum-seekers across the continent - a plan backed by safe-haven Germany but resisted by several states in the east.

Once in Hungary, most migrants seek to travel onto western Europe, particularly to Germany and Sweden, via Austria.

But with tens of thousands crossing its frontiers, German authorities on Sunday decided to reinstate border controls, and all trains between Austria and Germany were temporarily suspended, leaving thousands effectively stranded in Austria.

In addition to the new laws, Hungary is also building a controversial 13ft fence all along its 110-mile border with Serbia.

This morning, Germany's Vice Chancellor Sigmar Gabriel said the country may take in one million refugees this year, up from the record 800,000 arrivals predicted so far.

'There are many signs that Germany this year will take in not 800,000 refugees, as forecast by the interior ministry, but one million, he wrote to members of his centre-left Social Democratic party.

It comes amid fears thousands of refugees will be plunged into 'legal limbo' as EU countries impose differing border rules to deal with the migrant crisis.

The United Nations agency UNHCR warned the European Union that it must avoid fragmenting into a patchwork of countries with different border restrictions.

A motorway linking Austria to Hungary, which crosses the border at the point where thousands of migrants have been streaming west towards Germany, has been closed in both directions this morning.

'The reason is the flow of migrants expected by the police,'  the Austrian road operator ASFINAG said in a statement, adding that traffic in the other direction had been halted on the Hungarian side. How long the closure would last was unknown, it added. 

The interior minister of the southern German state of Bavaria said on Monday that temporary border controls could remain in place 'for weeks at least' as the country grapples with an unprecedented influx of refugees.

Europe's largest and richest economy has been a magnet for many people fleeing war and poverty in Syria and other parts of the Middle East and Africa, with most crossing the border from Austria into Bavaria.

(dailymail.co.uk)