The United Nations warns that a daily flow of about 8,000 Syrian and Iraqi refugees to Europe is likely to continue.
The figure came from UN regional coordinator for refugees Amin Awad, who spoke to Reuters news agency.
More than 5,000 refugees are arriving daily in Greece.
That flow could continue during the winter if the weather remains good and the borders open, the International Organisation for Migration (IOM) said.
About half a million migrants – mostly from Syria and other conflict zones in the Middle East and Africa – have arrived in Europe this year.
The refugee influx has caused tensions between EU neighbors in Central Europe, which continued on September 25 despite a visit to Austria by Hungary’s PM Viktor Orban.
Viktor Orban and Austrian Chancellor Werner Faymann did not appear together in public after their talks.
Werner Faymann had earlier likened Hungary’s tough handling of migrants to the policies of Nazi Germany – a comparison angrily dismissed by Hungary.
Speaking in Vienna, Viktor Orban said Hungary had to build a fence on its border with Croatia like the razor-wire fence completed on its border with Serbia.
What happens on the Croatia-Hungary border will be “decisive in the next few days” for the refugee crisis, he said. Hungary has nearly completed the fence on that border.
Hungary’s traditionally good relations with Austria must be maintained, Viktor Orban said, urging Vienna to show “clear support” for protection of the EU’s external borders.
Croatia – the EU’s newest member state – has struggled with an influx of migrants from Serbia, since they were blocked at the Hungarian border. Croatia-Serbia tensions escalated into a war of words.
On September 25, Croatia’s PM Zoran Milanovic said he was working to lift the country’s border restrictions “today or tomorrow”.
Vehicles have been blocked and Serbia – a candidate to join the EU – angrily compared the restrictions with “those of the World War Two fascist regime”.
Scars remain from the Serb-Croat fighting of the 1990s, when Yugoslavia disintegrated in inter-ethnic conflict.
The EU’s Commissioner for European Neighbourhood Policy, Johannes Hahn, visited a refugee camp in the border zone on September 25 with Serbia’s PM Aleksandar Vucic.
Deep divisions surfaced in the EU this week when ministers agreed to relocate about 120,000 refugees across Europe.
The refugees – from Syria, Iraq and Eritrea – will be transferred from Greece and Italy, to ease the pressure on overcrowded reception centers there.
However, there is still a dispute about the distribution plan. Hungary, Romania, the Czech Republic and Slovakia voted against it. They resent the imposition of quotas, arguing that they are ill-equipped to integrate non-EU rrefugees.
Many of the refugees are determined to reach Germany, whose Chancellor Angela Merkel has urged EU partners to take in more refugees. Germany expects to have at least 800,000 asylum seekers in 2015.
Germany’s federal government has pledged €4 billion ($4.5 billion) to its regional states, double the current levels of funding, to help them cope with a record refugee influx.
Four people have been arrested by Hungarian police over the discovery of the bodies of 71 migrants, thought to be Syrian, in an abandoned truck in Austria.
Three of those arrested are Bulgarian and one is Afghan.
The bodies of 59 men, 8 women and four children were discovered on August 27 in an abandoned truck on an Austrian highway near the Hungarian border.
They are thought to have been dead for about two days.
Officials said the victims probably died after suffocating in the vehicle.
The truck was towed to a customs building with refrigeration facilities where forensic teams worked through the night to examine the bodies.
The migrants are thought to have been dead when the vehicle crossed into Austria from Hungary. Among the victims was a girl aged between one and two years old.
The local Austrian police chief said a travel document found on the vehicle suggested that the group were Syrian migrants.
“Our preliminary assumption is of course that they were refugees, possibly a group of Syrian refugees,” Hans Peter Doskozil, Burgenland province police chief, told reporters.
The truck had the branding of a Slovakian poultry company, Hyza, on it but the firm said it no longer owned the vehicle.
Hans Peter Doskozil said it was unusual for people smugglers to use a refrigerated vehicle.
“In our preliminary investigation we found that there was no ventilation possible through the sides of the truck,” he said, adding that the victims had probably suffocated.
Hungarian police said in a statement that they had “conducted house searches… and questioned almost 20 people as witnesses”.
Hans Peter Doskozil said one of the Bulgarians arrested is assumed to be the truck’s owner, while it is “highly likely” the other two are “the ones who drove the vehicle”.
He said there was “an indication we are talking about a Bulgarian-Hungarian human trafficking operation”.
“If you look at the organization of people traffickers, these are the lowest two levels of a criminal organization,” Hans Peter Doskozil added.
No details have been given about the Afghan detainee.
The truck, which has Hungarian number plates, is understood to have left Budapest on Wednesday morning, August 26.
It is believed to have been parked in the lay-by between Neusiedl and Parndorf for at least 24 hours before police discovered the bodies.
Tens of thousands of migrants from conflict-hit states in the Middle East and Africa have been trying to make their way to Europe in recent months.
A record number of 107,500 migrants crossed the EU’s borders last month.
Some of them pay large sums of money to people smugglers to get them through borders illegally.
Macedonia has allowed some migrants to board a train north overnight, as many more remain trapped on the country’s border with Greece.
Crowds of people – many refugees from the war in Syria – are continuing to build up after Macedonian authorities sealed their southern border.
Manny refugees wish to travel through Macedonia and Serbia to reach northern Europe, via Hungary.
Large numbers, including children, spent the night in the open.
According to new reports, Macedonian security forces plan to let several hundred migrants in at a time on August 22 to coincide with train departures north towards Serbia and the rest of Europe.
Photo EPA
Migrants were beaten back with truncheons and riot shields by Macedonian security forces on August 21. Tear gas was fired.
Macedonia, formerly part of Yugoslavia, has declared a state of emergency to cope with the situation.
Meanwhile, the UN refugee agency, the UNHCR, has expressed concern for “thousands of vulnerable refugees and migrants, especially women and children, now massed on the Greek side of the border amid deteriorating conditions”.
The UNHCR urged Macedonia to “establish an orderly and protection-sensitive management of its borders” while appealing to Greece to “enhance registration and reception arrangements” on its side of the border.
It also said it had been assured by Macedonia the border “will not be closed in the future”, but did not elaborate.
Greece itself has seen almost 160,000 people landing on its shores since January, the UN estimates, with 50,000 arriving in the past month alone.
Macedonia’s Foreign Minister Nikola Poposki said all migrants had to register on entering the country and they had 72 hours to decide whether they would apply for asylum or pursue their route north.
Macedonia and its northern neighbor Serbia are not part of the European Union.
However Hungary, to the north of Serbia, is an EU member and is part of the Schengen area. This means that once in Hungary people can travel onwards throughout much of Europe (excluding Britain and Ireland) without needing to show documents at international borders.
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