BRUSSELS -- The European Union appealed Friday to member countries to live up to pledges to provide planes and other assets so that its border agency can help Greece and Hungary cope with an influx of foreigners.
EU leaders committed in April to triple the Frontex agency's budget and provide it with more assets as thousands of people fleeing conflict and poverty head to Europe in search of better lives.
"If we don't get these assets, it would seriously undermine Frontex's ability to carry out its operations," EU migration spokesman Natasha Bertaud said.
Many countries had pledged to provide assets for short-term use, but Bertaud said more planes and "technical assistance," including personnel and patrol cars, are needed for Greece and Hungary.
In Athens, Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras said the challenge is beyond the nation's resources as it struggles with an economic crisis and that the EU is not doing enough to help.
"The European Union has no point if it is just a union of separate countries that each looks out for its own interests," he said.
The International Organization for Migration said Friday that more than 192,000 people had arrived in Europe by sea this year through Wednesday. More than 2,000 people are believed to have died attempting the Mediterranean crossing.
Frontex said Friday that almost 50,000 people arrived in the EU in July via Greece, compared with 41,700 in all of 2014. That currently makes it the most-used entry point in Europe for migrants, most of whom come from Syria and Afghanistan.
Gil Arias-Fernandez, the deputy director of Frontex, said the agency would struggle to help Greece and Hungary "unless we receive the necessary equipment."
The border agency is considering leasing private aircraft, but the EU wants nations to provide the resources.
More than 110,000 people have arrived in Hungary this year, nearly all walking across the southern border with Serbia. Prime Minister Viktor Orban said a 13-foot-high fence being built there by the Hungarian army will be finished by Aug. 31.
State media reported that 18 people had been caught overnight after cutting through the fence near the Hungarian village of Asotthalom, where construction began this week. Hungary's governing Fidesz party said Friday that people caught cutting through the fence being built to stop them on the border with Serbia should be "punished in an exemplary manner," including prison sentences.
"It is not enough that illegal immigrants are crossing the country's border unlawfully, on top of it all they are damaging property of the Hungarian state," Fidesz parliamentary group leader Antal Rogan said in a statement.
Meanwhile, Italian officials said survivors from a boat that capsized off Libya as rescuers approached told investigators that smugglers armed with knives forced people to stay in the trawler's hold, increasing fears that more than 200 had been trapped inside and drowned.
Police said the five suspected smugglers -- Libyan and Algerian men ages 21 to 24 -- were detained Thursday in Palermo on the island of Sicily as they disembarked, along with 362 survivors, from an Irish naval vessel. Six other survivors were taken by helicopter to hospitals, and 26 bodies have been recovered.
The suspects were charged with multiple homicides and human trafficking on the basis of police interviews with dozens of survivors of the overcrowded, unseaworthy vessel that set sail from Libya.
The International Organization for Migration said survivors told its staff that up to 250 people had been forced to sit in the hold, "the most dangerous part of the ship."
The appeal from Brussels is a fresh sign of Europe's inability to manage the influx and share out refugees who arrive. It comes as incidents multiply involving migrants in France who want to go to the United Kingdom.
On Friday, one foreigner was caught in the Channel Tunnel trying to reach the U.K. from France, having walked about 30 miles underground in the darkness, dodging trains traveling to London from Paris as they hurtled by at up to 100 mph.
Officials at Eurotunnel, which operates the crossing, said Abdul Rahman Haroun, 40, was close to the other side of the tunnel, in Folkestone, England, when he was arrested.
Haroun, who news reports said is Sudanese and has no fixed address, was charged this week with obstructing engines or carriages on a railway under the Malicious Damage Act of 1861. He is expected to appear at Canterbury Crown Court on Aug. 24.
Meanwhile, a video released Friday by German authorities warns foreigners from the Balkans that they have very little chance of winning asylum in Germany and risk being billed for the cost of being deported.
The four-minute video, to be screened in Albania, Bosnia, Kosovo, Macedonia, Montenegro and Serbia, shows people being put aboard a police bus, then boarding a flight home.
"Don't trust promises that you can get asylum for economic reasons in Germany, or that other incentives like property or loans will be provided to you," the voice-over on the video says, warning that if asylum-seekers are deported, they face being billed "many thousand" dollars to cover the cost.
In this year's first half, Kosovo, Albania and Serbia were the second, third and fourth-largest sources respectively of asylum applicants in Germany, beaten only by Syria. About 40 percent of the total came from the Balkans.
Officials worry that economic migrants from democracies that aim to join the European Union are straining already-stretched refugee accommodation and weighing on Germans' acceptance of refugees from countries such as Syria, Iraq and Eritrea.
Information for this article was contributed by Nicholas Paphitis, Frances D'Emilio, Geir Moulson and staff members of The Associated Press and by Dan Bilefsky and Gaia Pianigiani of The New York Times.
A Section on 08/08/2015