EU Hands Macedonia Almost $100,000 to Deal With Migrant Crisis

The European Union (EU) has agreed to provide the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia with $99,700 (90,656 euros) of humanitarian aid, due to the increased number of refugees passing through the country's territory fleeing conflict and poverty in Africa and the Middle East, but primarily Syria.

Although not a member of the EU, Macedonia borders two members, Bulgaria and Greece. Medical charity group Médecins Sans Frontières told the BBC in June that around 300 asylum seekers cross into Macedonia on a daily basis from Greece alone. The former Yugoslav state is a transit stop for many migrants, who flee conflict in the Middle East, seeking to cross from southern Europe into more affluent northern EU members via Serbia.

The EU has agreed a kind of proportional system which determines the share of asylum seekers most of its members ought to receive based on the size of their economies, but non-members such as Macedonia have continued to be overwhelmed with the pressure of a large influx of refugees and economics migrants.

Last month Amnesty International said that Serbia and Macedonia "have become a sink for the overflow of refugees and migrants that nobody in the EU seems willing to receive." The report outline the migrant crisis faced by EU non-members Serbia and Macedonia, where asylum seekers are often stuck waiting until the EU grants them asylum - a process over which neither country has control.

Due to the lack of appropriate housing for migrants in Macedonia, the Red Cross has established four mobile teams which care for the hundreds of of refugees and migrants who are left without shelter or access to healthcare, temporarily staying around the country's largest train stations. According to the charity, migrants can spend days travelling by foot in the open air, leaving them vulnerable to accidents, abuse and threats from smugglers and criminal networks.

The Red Cross' Macedonian branch has been providing refugee families with food, clothes and medicine. The charity requested donations last month to fund its activity.

The EU's delegation in the Macedonian capital of Skopje issued a statement over the weekend, allocating $99,700 (90,656 euros) to the Disaster Relief Emergency Fund of the International Federation of the Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies.

The funds are to be spent by the Red Cross on essential basics for an estimated 4,600 migrants in Macedonia over the next three months, intended to cover services such as primary healthcare and water delivery, as well as purchasing commodities such as "hygiene kits, blankets, clothing, shoes, baby parcels and diapers." The aid is intended to ease the burden on Macedonia of dealing with refugees still stuck in legal limbo over their potential asylum in the EU.

The majority of the resources will go either towards the asylum seeker reception centre in Skopje or one of Macedonia's main train stations in the south, servicing arrivals from Greece, or in the north, servicing migrants on their way to Serbia.

Fourteen migrants were killed by a train in Macedonia in June while walking on train tracks, and the Associated Press reported that many in the country were taking advantage of a ban on selling bus and train tickets to migrants by leasing them second-hand bicycles at up to $225 each.

Earlier that same month the UK broadcaster Channel 4 aired an expose of Afghan migrant smuggling gangs and Albanian mafia active in extorting asylum seekers stuck in Macedonia.