The build-up of thousands of migrants and refugees on Greece’s northern borders is fast turning into a humanitarian disaster, the United Nations said on Tuesday as the European Union prepared to offer more financial aid.
The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) called for better planning and accommodation for at least 24,000 it said were stuck in Greece, including 8,500 at Idomeni.
“Europe is on the cusp of a largely self-induced humanitarian crisis,” UN refugee agency spokesman Adrian Edwards told a news briefing.
Migrants have become stranded in Greece since Austria and other countries along the Balkans migration corridor imposed restrictions on their borders, limiting the numbers able to cross.
Police chiefs from Macedonia, Serbia, Croatia and Slovenia, meeting in Belgrade, agreed to improve the system of joint registration of refugees to unblock gridlocks in Greece.
The burgeoning crisis adds to last year’s chaos when more than a million migrants and refugees arrived in the EU, many fleeing the war in Syria and walking from Turkey northwards.
Around 131,000 have reached the continent so far in 2016.
The European Commission, the EU executive, said it would float a plan on Wednesday to offer emergency financial aid for humanitarian crises inside the 28-nation bloc - comparable with operations it has launched elsewhere in the world.
Officials said the Commission plan would allocate €300m this year to helping any EU state, not only Greece, deal with such crises, and 700 million in all over the three years to the end of 2018.
The Greek government said it had asked the Commission for €480m worth of assistance, including ambulances, blankets and personnel to help with 100,000 asylum seekers.