Slovenia's premier has warned about the collapse of the European Union, as EU and Balkan leaders held emergency talks about the continent’s refugee crisis amid threats from three frontline states that they would close their borders.
The mini-summit in Brussels on October 25 aims to come up with a coherent policy to deal with the influx of thousands of migrants and refugees who have flooded into southern Europe in recent months -- mostly from Syria, Iraq, and Afghanistan.
Refugees have continued to come through the western Balkans and have shifted west into Slovenia after Hungary erected border fencing.
Since October 17, more than 62,000 migrants have arrived in Slovenia, with some 14,000 passing through the country on October 25.
"If we don't find a solution today, if we don't do everything we can today, then it is the end of the European Union as such," Slovenia’s Prime Minister Miro Cerar said.
"If we don't deliver concrete action, I believe Europe will start falling apart," he told reporters.
On October 24, Bulgaria, Romania, and Serbia warned that they would not allow themselves to become a "buffer zone" in the migrant crisis.
Bulgarian Prime Minister Boyko Borisov said in Sofia that the three countries would close their borders "at the very same moment" if Germany, Austria, and other countries in Western Europe close their borders.
