Migrant Crisis Sparks Balkan Border Battles As EU Buckles Under Overwhelming Refugee Flow

When last we checked in on Europe’s worsening migrant crisis, Brussels had just approved a plan which aims to settle some 120,000 asylum seekers by way of a mandatory quota system. Hungary, the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Romania were opposed which, as WSJ noted, ‘sets the stage for intensified friction within the bloc over the contentious issue.’
To be sure, calling the crisis a ‘contentious issue’ is something of an understatement. The massive people flows stemming from Syria’s protracted civil war threaten to tear the EU apart just months after fraught negotiations with Greece over the country’s third bailout program very nearly ended in the conclusive debunking of the euro indissolubility thesis.
The Balkans have become the frontlines of the crisis as refugees make their way north to the German ‘promised land’ where cold beer and Merkel selfie photo ops beckon. Unfortunately (if you’re a fleeing migrant), Serbia, Croatia, and especially Hungary aren’t excited about being used as a kind of migrant superhighway and once the number of refugees streaming across its southern border became too much to bear, Hungary built a 100-mile razor wire fence. Of course when you’re fleeing bullets, barrel bombs, and sword-wielding jihadists, a 12 foot high fence isn’t much of a deterrent and so some refugees attempted to test Hungarian premier Viktor Orban’s resolve by demanding to be let through. Here’s what happened next:

This post was published at Zero Hedge on September 25, 2015.