Ljubljana: Tiny Slovenia has become the latest in a line of nations putting up barriers against a surge of asylum-seekers seeking to reach Western Europe.
Slovenian police said Thursday they have erected 5km of the fence in one day despite a border spat with neighbouring Croatia. Slovenia insists will not seal off entry but the move shows European countries are increasingly acting on their own.
Hungary's right-wing government has stopped all migrant traffic through its territory with more than 200km of fence on its borders with Serbia and Croatia.
Further east, Bulgaria was the first in the region to fence off its border with Turkey. Greece has a short fence with Turkey as well, finding that a river was not enough of a deterrent.
The EU predicts that three million more people may try to enter Europe by 2017.
European Union leader Donald Tusk says saving Europe's Schengen passport-free travel zone is going to be a "race against time" after Germany, Sweden, Slovenia and other EU nations have acted unilaterally.
Tusk spoke Thursday at the end of a European-African summit in Malta to find ways to send migrants who don't qualify for asylum back to their homelands and discourage more from leaving Africa.
Tusk warned: "Without effective control of our external borders, Schengen will not survive." He added "We must hurry, but without panic."
The Schengen travel zone involves 30 nations, including some not in the European Union.
Meanwhile, Hungary's prime minister said his country and others from Eastern Europe will send over 300 police and border guards to Greece to help "stop" the flow of migrants.
Viktor Orban, attending a migration summit in Malta, told Hungarian state television that Poland, the Czech Republic and Slovakia – the other countries in the so-called Visegrad Group, or V4 – were also taking part in the initiative set up "in the interests of stopping the refugee wave at the southern borders of Greece."
He did not clarify what the forces would do in Greece, which almost all the migrants reach by sea in small and often-dangerous boats. There was no comment from authorities in Greece, where a general strike was taking place Thursday.
Orban, who says migration is primarily a threat to Europe, said there is no will in the European Union to stop the migrant flow. He said last week's ferry strike in Greece which stranded thousands of refugees on islands had been more effective in stopping the migrants than EU leaders.
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