After a punishing and perilous trip escaping war and persecution in their homelands, migrants were greeted with applause and candy in Germany Saturday. Some of the refugee seekers burst into tears at the sight of the welcome, the Associated Press reports.
Earlier this week, they were held up at train stations in Hungary, prevented from travelling to Germany. Images of desperate families climbing aboard packed trains, or clinging to rail tracks as Hungarian police blocked their route, were replaced with those of Germans and Austrian well-wishers offering candy and cuddly toys to the tired travelers.
The first group, made up of 450 migrants, arrived on a special train service in Germany. A bus fleet delivered 4,000 migrants to Austria and some 10,000 migrants are expected in the two countries, according to the BBC.
“I’m very glad to be in Germany. I hope that I find here a much better life. I want to work,” said Homam Shehade, a 37-year-old Syrian shopkeeper, to the AP. Shehade traveled 25 days to reach Germany and left behind his wife, 7-year-old boy, 2 1/2-year-old girl and his parents and brother, hoping for a better life in Germany.
“I hope that God protects them from the planes and bombs. My shop was bombed and my house was bombed,” he told AP, saying that he plans to bring the rest of his family with him to Germany when possible.
“The Austrians promised to take these illegal migrants, and take care of them,” said Zoltan Kovacs, a spokesman for the Hungarian government, to the AP. “We’ll see how it’s going to happen, because obviously it raises questions [about] how the procedure, how registration is going to proceed.”
Hungary had blocked the passage of the migrants to Germany for days, and only relented because they were posing a menace to the public, according to Prime Minister Viktor Orban.
“What will it solve if we divide 50,000 or 100,000 migrants among us, when uncountable millions will be on the way?” Orban told reporters, concerned that the rest of Syria’s 5 million displaced people are headed to Europe.
European leaders have failed to respond cohesively to the crisis at their gates, with nations like Germany volunteering to take 800,000 migrants, while the United Kingdom refuses to take more than 1,500. European Union leaders will hold a summit Sept. 14 to discuss how each nation will respond to the crisis.
Austria says it will not limit how many people pour through its border with Hungary because the migrants are “desperate” people from “crisis regions,” an interior ministry spokesperson told the BBC Saturday.
Chancellor Angela Merkel said Germany will not need to raise taxes to handle the influx of migrants, but her spokesman said this was an exceptional case and is not a suspension of the usual European Union rules.
Under the current “Dublin rules,” migrants must apply for asylum in the first European Union country they reach.
Over 350,000 migrants have crossed the EU’s borders in 2015 alone — a number that only highlights the need for Europe to act together in the “difficult” talks ahead, Federica Mogherini, the EU’s foreign policy chief, emphasized.
“No-one can have the illusion today that there is one single member state that is not concerned by this crisis,” she told the BBC. “We are all together in this, and the sooner we realize we have to take urgent decisions together — the better, and the [more] effective they will be.”
Economically strapped Greece has absorbed 142,000 refugees since June 1, according to the International Organization for Migration, while Italy has taken in 107,000 refugees.
In a joint statement earlier this week, Germany, Italy and France have called for solidarity and asked for a “fair distribution” of the refugees throughout Europe.
