Eastern Europe Rejects Migrant Quotas as Europe Divided over Crisis

German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier met counterparts from the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, and Slovakia in Prague, but failed to convince them to accept an EU plan to distribute 160,000 refugees around the continent.

"We're convinced that as countries we should keep control over the number of those we are able to accept," said Czech Foreign Minister Lubomir Zaoralek after the meeting, AFP reported.

Record numbers of people, many of them fleeing war and conflict, continued to pour into Europe, with around 7,600 entering Macedonia in the last 24 hours.

Faced with the surge, Germany says that the EU plan does not go far enough, but Chancellor Angela Merkel has few options for convincing countries that refuse to take part, having already rejected punitive measures such as cutting EU subsidies.

Hungary's response has been to send more troops to help build a four-metre fence along its southern border, and images from inside its controversial Roszke holding camp showed families being fed "like animals in a pen," with hungry women and children caught in a scrum as police threw sandwiches at them.

"It was inhumane and it really speaks for these people that they didn't fight over the food despite being clearly very hungry," said Austrian volunteer Michaela Spritzendorfer, who filmed the scenes.

They raised further concerns over the treatment of refugees in Hungary, which saw record numbers of arrivals on Thursday and is set to implement harsh new laws next week that will allow it to jail migrants.

The numbers of migrants streaming through the Balkans into Hungary on Thursday was the highest yet recorded, many braving police truncheons and torrential rain in their desperate attempt to reach Western Europe.

The surge, which Hungarian police said saw a record 3,601 people enter the country Thursday, forced Austria's train operator to suspend services with Hungary due to "massive overcrowding."

Much of eastern Europe remains bitterly opposed to relocating migrants, even though the vast majority are heading north.

Of 16,000 migrants registered in Austria since Monday, all but around 1,100 are aiming for Germany, local authorities said.

"It is inappropriate to talk about mandatory quotas, calculated on an extremely bureaucratic basis, almost like an accountancy exercise I might say, without consulting member states," said Romania President Klaus Iohannis.

His views chimed with those of Slovakian Prime Minister Robert Fico, who said Wednesday he did not "want to wake up one day and have 50,000 people here about whom we know nothing.".