Spasms from Europe’s exploding migrant crisis coursed across the continent from Hungary to the English Channel.
In the east, Budapest’s main train station was a flashpoint, as angry migrants and refugees tried to board trains in Hungary for Western Europe.
In the west, migrants on the tracks near Calais, France, shut down Eurostar train service for a time through the tunnel that runs under the English Channel to England.
Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orban will travel to Brussels on Thursday to address the situation. There, he will meet with Jean-Claude Juncker, the president of the European Commission, and European Council President Donald Tusk.
Passports and visas, please
Tensions simmered at Keleti station in Budapest.
Hundreds of people who had expected to board trains to head on to Austria and Germany instead found Hungarian police officers barring their way. Some protests erupt.
It’s the latest crisis point to emerge as a wave of migrants — many refugees fleeing conflict in Syria or Iraq — who want to make their way to Western European where they hope to claim asylum.
The journey has been an arduous one.
“We have been here five days. No food, no sleep — no place to sleep, no anything,” one Syrian refugee at Keleti station told CNN on Tuesday.
He and his fellow travelers had train tickets but were not being allowed through, he said.
“The problem is the amount of migrants with the wrong papers,” said Reka Hegedus, a spokeswoman for the train station. “Obviously, even if they have tickets, it is not enough.”
Only those with proper documentation — a valid passport, a ticket and any necessary visas — were being allowed into the station, with police checking the papers of those seeking to enter.
“European regulations require that a person wishing to go on to Austria or Germany, for example, has the necessary documents,” a government statement said. “People at Budapest’s Keleti railway station demanding to be allowed free passage are demanding something which is not possible under European legislation.”
Flashpoint: Hungary
Hungary has come under increasing pressure from Western European countries to change its approach to the migrant crisis.
It has been erecting a barbed-wire fence along its more than 100-mile border with Serbia in a bid to prevent migrants crossing illegally as they make their way north.
Hungarian government spokesman Zoltan Kovacs told CNN’s “The World Right Now” the lack of documentation was a key issue for authorities.
“That’s one major problem we have to face: that these people at least to the Hungarian border came without papers, or got rid of papers, and at the end of the day it’s basically impossible to determine whether they are telling the truth that they are coming from Syria or other war zones,” he said.
In an earlier statement, Kovacs called on Germany to clarify its position on allowing Syrian refugees into Germany from Hungary, “calling for order and legality to be restored at the borders of the European Union.”
Refugees flood into Germany
Even with the bottleneck in Hungary, migrants were still making their way to Germany.
Germany’s government said last month it expected up to 800,000 asylum seekers to come this year — four times more than in 2014.
At Munich’s main station, dozens of refugees seem to arrive on every train.
Processing takes place in the parking lot as the latest arrivals are ferried off to shelters.
“It was so hard for us. It took a very long time,” said a woman from Afghanistan. “Especially in Hungary, it was very difficult to get through Hungary. We had almost no food and water.”
German Chancellor Angela Merkel said Monday that Germany — where some are opposed to taking in asylum seekers — must show “flexibility” when it comes to dealing with the crisis.
European Union member states agreed in July to take in more than 32,000 migrants to ease the burden on Italy and Greece, where the largest numbers have arrived. Another 8,000 should be allocated by the end of the year, said the European Union’s commissioner for migration.
For the most part, the public supports Merkel.
Local football clubs hoisted welcome banners over the weekend. Villages held “refugee welcome” parties for the newcomers. And a recent news poll estimated that 60% back Merkel’s warm welcome.
In Reykjavik, Icelanders express similar sentiments. A protest calls on the government to accept more refugees from Syria.
Huge numbers make sea crossing
The European Union has been trying to find ways to ease the migrant pressure on Italy and Greece, where most migrants enter Europe, but many EU member countries have been reluctant to accept a voluntary quota.
One of them is Slovakia, which said last month that it only wanted to take in Christians because it has only a tiny Muslim community and it would be hard for new Muslim arrivals to integrate.
The foreign ministers of Germany, France and Britain issued a statement Friday asking a special EU council to meet later this month to work on measures to better manage the influx of migrants.
Last week, in Austria, the bodies of 71 people were found in a truck abandoned by suspected smugglers. The fate of those people, who likely were fleeing war-ravaged Syria, has highlighted the risks involved in trying to reach Western Europe by land.
Many more seek to make the perilous journey by sea, boarding overcrowded, unseaworthy boats departing from Turkey or north Africa.
More than 350,000 migrants have reached Mediterranean countries by sea in 2015 so far, the International Organization for Migration told CNN on Tuesday.
This compares to a total of just under 220,000 migrants arriving by sea for the whole of 2014, according to its figures.