'Disaster' if Turkey talks fail

EU migration commissioner Dimitris Avramopoulos yesterday warned that failure to make progress with Turkey at a March summit on stemming the migrant tide would spell "disaster" for the bloc.

"If there is no convergence and agreement on March 7, we will be led to disaster," Avramopoulos told a conference in Delphi, central Greece. "March 7 is the day that will decide everything," he said.

The meeting promises to be crucial, both for the implementation of the deal that Brussels and Ankara signed in November to cut migrant flows, and in trying to forge unity within the European Union on coping with the biggest such crisis in its history.

Meanwhile, Greece moved to slow the flow of migrants from its islands to the mainland yesterday as hundreds of refugees left reception centers with nowhere to go as countries in the Balkans progressively shut down their borders.

At Idomeni, a small community on the border with Macedonia, Reuters witnesses saw hundreds of families walking toward the frontier to join an estimated 3,000 more at a makeshift camp where many pitched tents in a field close to razor wire fence.

Greece's migration row with Austria intensified yesterday, with Athens refusing a visit from Austria's interior minister whom it accused of "falsifying the truth" over its border control efforts.

The snub came a day after Greece recalled its ambassador to Vienna for consultations in retaliation for Austria's decision to leave Athens out of a Balkans migration meeting this week, reports AFP.

Meanwhile, Hungary's justice minister accused the EU yesterday of overstepping its mandate by seeking to impose migrant resettlement quotas on member states and said Budapest could hold its planned referendum on the issue in 150 days at the earliest.

Hungary has been at odds with the European Commission and some fellow EU countries over how to handle the influx of large numbers of migrants into the bloc.

"Our view is that the EU has no authority to order the mandatory settlement of people in any given country. The EU has no such jurisdiction," Justice Minister Laszlo Trocsanyi told a news conference.

Hungary believes the EU proposal represents a "creeping curtailment" of power, he said, adding that the referendum could be held at the earliest in 150 days' time and at the latest within 250 days, subject to a legal process.