 "Hungary, Refugee")
Austria and Germany threw open their borders to thousands of exhausted migrants on Saturday, bussed to the Hungarian border by a right-wing government that had tried to stop them but was overwhelmed by the sheer numbers reaching Europe's frontiers.
Left to walk the last yards into Austria, rain-soaked migrants, many of them refugees from Syria's civil war, were whisked by train and shuttle bus to Vienna, where many said they were resolved to continue on to Germany.
Germany said it expected to receive up to 10,000 on Saturday. Austrian police said 4,000 had crossed by the morning, but that many more were expected during the day as Europe's asylum system buckled under the pressure of the continent's worst refugee crisis since the Yugoslav wars of the 1990s.
"It was just such a horrible situation in Hungary," said Omar, arriving in Vienna with his family and hundreds of other migrants who poured out onto a fenced-off platform and were handed food, drinks and other supplies.
In Budapest, almost emptied of migrants by nightfall on Friday, the main railway station was again filling up with newly arrived migrants but trains to western Europe remained cancelled. So hundreds set off by foot, saying they would walk to the Austrian border like others had tried on Friday.
After days of confrontation and chaos, Hungary's government deployed over 100 buses overnight to take thousands of migrants to the Austrian border. Austria said it had agreed with Germany that it would allow the migrants access, waiving asylum rules that require them to register in the first EU state they reach.
Wrapped in blankets and sleeping bags against the rain, long lines of weary migrants, many carrying small, sleeping children, climbed off buses on the Hungarian side of the border and walked into Austria, receiving fruit and water from aid workers. Waiting Austrians held signs that read, "Refugees welcome".
"We're happy. We'll go to Germany," said a Syrian man who gave his name as Mohammed. Another, who declined to be named, said: "Hungary should be fired from the European Union. Such bad treatment."
Hungary insisted the bus rides were a one-off, even as hundreds more migrants assembled in Budapest on Saturday, part of a seemingly relentless surge through the Balkan peninsula from Turkey and Greece.
Bavarian state police said they expected the first refugees to arrive in Germany around midday, with national rail operator Deutsche Bahn saying a special train with 500 refugees aboard due to reach Munich around lunchtime.
Hungary, the main entry point into Europe's borderless Schengen zone for migrants heading northwards, has taken a hard line, vowing to seal its southern frontier within days. Hungarian officials have painted the crisis as a defence of Europe's prosperity, identity and "Christian values" against an influx of mainly Muslim migrants.
For days, several thousand camped outside Budapest's main railway station, where trains to western Europe were cancelled as the government insisted all those entering Hungary be registered and their asylum applications processed in the country as per EU rules. But on Friday, in separate rapid-fire developments, hundreds broke out of a teeming camp on Hungary's frontier with Serbia, escaped a stranded train, and took to the highway by foot chanting "Germany, Germany!"
The government appeared to throw in the towel, ordering over 100 buses to take them to the border.
Italian president calls for shared EU asylum policy
Italian President Sergio Mattarella called on Saturday for shared asylum rules in the European Union, saying thousands of migrants approaching Europe should not be seen as enemies.
Speaking at a conference in northern Italy, Mattarella said he was hopeful the bloc was finally on the road to common rules, after Germany and France joined Italy last week in urging the EU to take a more centrally coordinated approach.
"The choice is not between surrendering to an invasion and the supposed defence of 'Fortress Europe'," said Mattarella, whose role is largely ceremonial but takes on important powers in times of political instability.
Mattarella said the Dublin Regulation, which requires people seeking refuge in Europe to do so in the first country where they set foot, should be replaced with shared, updated rules in order to spread the burden more fairly.
