EU Sees Hungary as New Migrant 'Hotspot'

The European Commission on Tuesday said it stood ready to provide Hungary with emergency EU facilities as Budapest struggles to cope with the record numbers of migrants streaming across its borders.

"We are ready to create a hotspot in Hungary, because this country needs our support," said Natasha Bertaud, a spokeswoman for the commission, the EU's executive body which is tasked with coordinating the bloc's 28 member states in tackling the crisis.

The so-called "hotspots" are newly created triage centers run by EU authorities and set up to accelerate the registration and handling of migrants, most of them refugees fleeing war in Syria.

Two hotspots exist so far, one in Catania, Sicily -- to face the massive flow of migrants across the Mediterranean -- and the other in Greece.

"No request has been made so far by Hungary, but the European teams can be deployed fairly quickly," Bertaud told reporters in Brussels.

Hungarian authorities said almost 2,100 people, the highest ever daily total, spilled over into Hungary on Monday just days before the completion of a vast razor-wire barrier to stop the flow.

The arrivals were among some 7,000 refugees whose grueling journey to the European Union had been temporarily blocked last week when Macedonia declared a state of emergency and shut its borders for three days to halt the huge influx.

Hungary is not only facing arrivals from Syria, but also migrants from countries immediately neighboring the EU, such as Kosovo, Serbia, and Bosnia.

According to EU border agency Frontex, a total of 102,000 migrants arrived in the EU via the bloc's eastern neighbors between January and July this year, versus just 8,000 for the same period in 2014.

The passage via the western Balkans has now become one of the main ways into the EU for the several hundred thousand migrants entering the bloc this year, in Europe's worst refugee crisis since World War II.