Slovenia calls in army to manage refugees at border

On Tuesday, Slovenia called in the army to help it manage refugees seeking to reach northern Europe through the country before winter, the Guardian reports.

Slovenia has become the latest trouble spot on the journey chosen by refugees to enter Europe, as the nation bloc faces the unprecedented crisis.

The Guardian added that the government had amended the country’s defence law early on Wednesday to allow soldiers to join border police in patrolling the 670-kilometre border with Croatia, and said it would ask for financial backup from the EU to deal with numbers that have “exceeded all manageable possibilities”.

On Saturday, Hungary sealed off its border with Croatia, forcing more than 19,460 refugees to make their way elsewhere, with most arriving in Slovenia, a nation of two million people.

Under the new measures Slovenian soldiers can assist police in patrolling the border, detaining people and handing them over to police, and issuing orders to civilians in the border area, whereas until now, the army could provide only technical and logistical support to police.

The EU commissioner for migration, Dimitris Avramopoulos, is expected to visit Slovenia on Thursday to discuss its request.

Meanwhile the United Nations has said that Greece has welcomed over half a million refugees just this year.

The BBC adds that the rate of people arriving has risen to 8,000 a day, with many hoping to beat winter weather.

Most of those arriving in Greece then head north forming bottlenecks in some Balkan states.

The UN further added that on Tuesday morning alone, some 27,500 people arrived on the Greek islands, while thousands were left stranded in wet, freezing weather on the Serbia-Croatia border after travelling up through Greece and Macedonia.

Estimates show that over 600,000 refugees, mainly fleeing violence in Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan, have braved the dangerous journey to Europe so far this year, a figure that is both shocking and record breaking, particularly compared to 2014’s

The BBC noted that at least 3,135 have died making the journey - compared with 3,279 throughout 2014 280,000 arrivals.

In September, the EU announced plans to relocate 120,000 asylum seekers from overstretched frontline states Italy and Greece by means of a compulsory quota system that was fiercely opposed by some eastern members of the bloc. However, the plan requires most of the 28 member states to accept a share of 160,000 people from the two Mediterranean nations over two years.

The Guardian reports that so far only 19 Eritrean asylum seekers have been relocated from Italy to Sweden although another 100 people are due to be flown to other cities in the coming days.

In addition, member states have also been slow to follow up with promised financial help; only about €474million of the promised €2.8billion promised at an emergency EU summit on the 23rd  September have materialised..