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+++ Migration crisis - live updates +++

September 1, 2015

Chaos and confusion have hit Budapest and Vienna train stations as migrants trying to reach Germany are barred from Hungarian trains. Hundreds have made it to Germany despite the obstacles. Read the latest here.

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Image: Getty Images/AFP/G. Besenyei

All updates in Universal Coordinated Time (UTC)

14:35 Germany's Social Democrat (SPD) Chairman Sigmar Gabriel has spoken out about the country's immigration policies, saying both an immigration law and focus on refugee protection were needed. "Immigration law spells out which people Germany needs to help us build the country. Refugees can also make a big contribution to this but primarily we want to give them protection from war, hardship, persecution - even if they cannot provide us with skilled labor," Gabriel said in a video podcast released Tuesday, adding "we must not act as if the refugees are only allowed to come if they can help fill our need for skilled labor."

13:50 The EU's Frontex border agency has reported a surge in demand for fake Syrian passports - because people know those fleeing the war in Syria have a high chance of gaining asylum in the European Union. "People who use fake Syrian passports often speak Arabic. They may come from North Africa or the Middle East but they have the profile of economic migrants," Frontex chief Fabrice Leggeri told French radio station Europe 1, adding that the brisk trade in the passports had emerged primarily in Turkey.

13:45 Germany's southern state of Bavaria has pleaded for more support from the rest of the country and the EU as hundreds of people seeking asylum continue to arrive. "Bavaria cannot handle this all by itself any more," the state's social affairs minister Emilia Müller said. "The number of arrivals of asylum seekers is exploding," she said, adding that about 1,000 refugees were in the Austrian city of Salzburg seeking to travel on to Germany, as well as 5,000 in Hungary.

12:20 People in Munich have been heading to the city's main train station equipped with donations for the arriving refugees.

Helpers provide water to migrants outside the main railway station in Munich, Germany, September 1, 2015.
Helpers provided water outside Munich's central train stationImage: Reuters/L. Barth

Munich police tweeted that they had received enough supplies for the day, thanking citizens for their support.

11:40 Bavaria has opened Germany's first reception center for asylum seekers hailing from Balkan countries. The center near Ingolstadt, located in a former barracks, is intended to house 500 people at a time while their applications for asylum are processed. The vast majority of applications from citizens of Balkan countries are denied because Germany's government has deemed them "safe" countries of origin.

Deutschland Ankunfts- und Rückführungseinrichtung für Flüchtlinge in Manching
The buildings used for the asylum request processing center in Manching, near IngolstadtImage: picture-alliance/dpa/S. Hoppe

11:23 Federal police in Germany announce that they have registered a record 2,200 asylum seekers along the border with Austria in the past 24 hours, the highest number seen by any of the country's federal police districts since the start of the crisis.

10:34 Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban will meet with European leaders in Brussels on Thursday to discuss the crisis, according to government's website.

9:55 Chancellor Angela Merkel says Berlin isn't to blame for the waves of Syrian refugees trying to board trains in Budapest in hopes of reaching Germany.

Balking at Hungary's suggestion that Germany's "more flexible attitude" has created the current train station chaos, she said that "the current [EU-wide] rules are clearly not being praticed" by all member nations.

9:42 "Germany has not suspended Dublin," says a spokesman for the country's interior ministry, referring to questions as to the nation's stance on the Dublin Regulation, which requires all refugees to remain and be registered in the first EU country they arrive in.

"The Dublin rules are still valid and we expect European member states to stick to them. Whoever comes to Hungary must get registered there and go through the asylum procedure there."

9:33 Angela Merkel and Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy are meeting in Berlin to discuss the crisis. In a joint press conference, Rajoy urged the European Commission to clearly define safe countries of origin and "work towards a certain harmonization" for handling the situation in the future.

9:10 Austrian police announce that they have arrested two more suspects in connection to last week's grim discovery of an abandoned truck carrying the bodies of 71 deceased migrants. One man was arrested in Bulgaria and a second in Hungary.

9:09 Budapest's eastern train station has been reopened, but refugees are to be kept out, according to Hungarian news agency MTI.

9:00 Germany is scheduled to open the doors of its first registration center specifically for migrants from Balkan countries near the city of Ingolstadt in the state of Bavaria. Most of these asylum seekers are to be deported - their countries of origin having been deemed "safe" by Berlin.

8:55 UNICEF announces that the number of women and children who have fled to western Europe through Macedonia has tripled in the past three months. From Geneva, the UN's agency for children says that around 3,000 people are passing through the former Yugoslav republic daily.

8:52 The Greek coast guard announces that it has saved over 1,000 migrants near the country's eastern Aegean islands in a single day. Thirty-one different search and rescue operations have been carried out since Monday morning.

8:40 Chanting things like "Germany, Germany!" "Merkel!" and "Freedom!" asylum seekers begin demonstrating outside Budapest's Keleti station:

8:00 Police begin to clear Keleti train station in Budapest, with refugees shouting and demanding they be able to use their tickets, on which they have spent hundreds of euros.

DW correspondent Max Hofmann is outside the station:

7:55 Migrants who traveled from Budapest to Vienna on Monday are hoping to make it to Munich by the end of the day:

7:46 Austria demands Germany clarify its position on migration, after Berlin announced last month that despite the Dublin Regulation, Syrian refugees will be given special status.

"There were rumors that Germany is even sending trains to Budapest to pick up refugees. It is all the more important, that Germany informs refugees in Hungary that Dublin has not been suspended," says Austrian Interior Minister Johanna Mikl-Leitner.

7:30 Loudspeakers at Budapest's Keleti train station, from which all trains to Austria and Germany leave, announce that all traffic in and out is suspended until further notice one day after 3,650 refugees travel from Hungary to Vienna in hopes of reaching the German state of Bavaria.

es/kms (AFP, AP, dpa, Reuters)