BERLIN (Sputnik) — Austria, Slovenia, Croatia and Serbia have tightened controls on their borders to stop thousands of mostly Middle Eastern migrants from traveling north to more affluent countries in Europe and effectively stranding some 30,000 refugees in Greece.
"This situation is not durable or sustainable," Merkel told the national broadcaster MDR. "If we don’t reach a deal with Turkey… Greece will not be able to bear this weight for long."
Some 880,000 migrants used the Balkan route in 2015 to enter the European Union and 128,000 migrants entered the bloc through the Balkans in the first two months of 2016, according to European Council President Donald Tusk.
On Monday, a EU-Turkey summit negotiated a preliminary deal on migrants under which Ankara pledged to stem the flow of Syrian refugees to the European Union in exchange for $3.3 billion and the fast-tracking of Turkey's EU membership bid.
