Germany and its second city, Munich, are reaching the limit of their capacity in the face of the biggest refugee influx since the second world war, senior officials have said.
The economy minister, Sigmar Gabriel, said in a newspaper interview on Sunday that Germany was reaching its limit as thousands of refugees continue to stream across its borders every day.
“It’s true. The European lack of action in the refugee crisis is now pushing even Germany to the limit of its ability,” he said in an interview published on Der Tagesspiegel’s website.
The German government is expecting 800,000 new arrivals this year. On Saturday, about 13,000 arrived in Munich alone.
Earlier, a police official in Munich said: “Given the numbers from yesterday, it is very clear that we have reached the upper limit of our capacity.”
The president of the Upper Bavaria region, Christoph Hillenbrand, said he did not know “how we can cope”, according to the Bild am Sonntag tabloid, which headlined its article “Munich at the brink of collapse”.
Bavarian public television channel BR said the city “came very close to a humanitarian disaster”, although authorities managed to limit the numbers of people sleeping on mattresses on the floor to just a few dozen, rather than the hundreds as earlier feared.
Authorities are considering whether to open up the Olympiahalle – a stadium used for the 1972 Olympics which today serves as a concert hall or sports arena – as a temporary shelter for refugees.
Refugees continued to move north through the Balkans in large numbers. Hungary reported another one-day record on Saturday, when 4,330 people entered the country.
Further south, 28 people drowned after the boat they were on capsized off a Greek island; 98 were rescued.
