Struggling Germany urges neighbours to do more to ease refugee crisis

Germany told its European partners they must take in more refugees on Monday as it struggles to cope with record numbers of asylum seekers and as police in Hungary used pepper spray on migrants who broke out of a reception centre at the border.

Chancellor Angela Merkel, speaking after a weekend in which 20,000 migrants entered Germany from Hungary by train, bus and on foot, described the influx as “breathtaking” and tried to reassure the country the crisis was manageable.

Dramatic images from last week, especially a photograph of a Syrian toddler drowned on a Turkish beach, have created new political pressure to open doors, even in countries that argued previously that taking in too many migrants could make the problem worse by encouraging others to make dangerous voyages.

“I am happy that Germany has become a country that many people outside of Germany now associate with hope,” she said at a news conference in Berlin. But she and her vice chancellor, Sigmar Gabriel, coupled their message of optimism with a warning to EU partners who have resisted a push from Berlin, Paris and Brussels to agree to quotas for refugees flowing in mainly from Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan.

“What isn’t acceptable in my view is that some people are saying this has nothing to do with them,” Merkel said. “This won’t work in the long run. There will be consequences although we don’t want that.”

Gabriel said that if countries in eastern Europe and elsewhere continued to resist accepting their fair share of refugees, the bloc’s open border regime, known as Schengen, would be at risk.

“This would be a dramatic political blow for Europe, but also a heavy economic blow, also for those countries that are saying they don’t want to help now,” he said.