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| (Left), Police arrest men around the main station in Cologne. (Right), A note found by police on two suspects. |
Europe was in crisis on Friday night as mounting fury over sex attacks by Middle Eastern and North African migrants threatened to divide the continent east from west.
Political tensions caused by allowing more than one million migrants to enter Europe in 2015 boiled over on Friday, as leaders from central and eastern countries announced the death of liberal Europe and called for the continent to seal its borders.
“The idea of multicultural Europe has failed,” proclaimed Robert Fico, the prime minister of Slovakia, calling for an extraordinary summit of EU leaders next week to discuss fresh reports of migrant-led sex attacks emerging from Germany, Switzerland, Sweden, Austria and Finland. Bohuslav Sobotka, his Czech counterpart, immediately echoed the call.
“The migrants cannot be integrated, it's simply impossible,” Mr Fico added, citing a “clear link” between the sex attacks and the influx of refugees that has swept through Europe from the failed states of Syria and North Africa.
As Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, promised to step up deportation of immigrants who broke the law, Belgium’s immigration minister tried to calm popular fears over the sex attacks by ordering new migrants to face mandatory “respect for women” courses.
But Hungary’s hardline conservative leader, Viktor Orban, dismissed such measures, calling for a complete halt to migration into Europe and the establishment of a new “European defence line” on Greece's northern borders with Macedonia and Bulgaria. » | Peter Foster, Europe Editor, Justin Huggler in Cologne and Richard Orange in Malmö | Friday, January 8, 2016
