Vienna: Serbia and Macedonia’s foreign ministers called for EU action on Europe’s migrant crisis at a summit Thursday of leaders from the western Balkans, attended by German Chancellor Angela Merkel.

Both have become major transit countries for tens of thousands of migrants trying to reach the European Union in recent months, with Macedonia last week forced to declare a state of emergency.

“We are faced with the biggest refugee crisis since Second World War. It is a true migration of peoples and Serbia is a transit country,” Serbia’s Ivica Dacic said.

“This is a problem of the European Union and we [the transit countries] are expected to come up with an action plan,” he said.

“I think the European Union has to come up with a plan first,” he said. “I have to be very direct here. Please understand, we are bearing the brunt of the problem.”

This was echoed by Nikola Poposki, his counterpart from Macedonia, which he said is currently having to deal with 3,000 migrants arriving every day from EU member Greece.

“We are not going to do the job with the 90,000 euros (Dh371,069) that we have received so far and we are probably not going to reach the objective with the one million euros that have been announced,” he said.

“Unless we have a European answer to this issue, none of us should be under any illusion that this will be solved,” Poposki said.

“Now we will need to act, and probably with this Vienna conference we can … come to a solution which is a European one.”

German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier said that Europe’s migrant crisis is a “challenge that strikes at the very core of our European values, the values of humanity and solidarity”.

Reiterating his call for a reform of the Dublin Accords “to distribute refugees fairly within the EU”, he said that Germany will contribute one million euros to help the western Balkans counties cope with the migrants, as well as food and other supplies.

But he also called on western Balkans governments “to help manage the expectations of your citizens and provide them with a realistic picture of their virtually non-existent chances of being granted asylum in Germany”.

Almost 40 per cent of asylum-seekers in Germany are from the western Balkan countries, Steinmeier said.

Austrian Foreign Minister Sebastian Kurz agreed that a “pan-European solution … is desperately needed.”

“If we don’t manage to find a common, swift European solution, then more and more countries — as Hungary and Denmark — try with unilateral measures and their own measures to solve this crisis on their own,” Kurz said.

“This will not work. And it endangers first and foremost our European idea of open borders,” he said.

As many as 50 refugees were found dead in a parked lorry in eastern Austria near the Hungarian border on Thursday, and German Chancellor Angela Merkel said the discovery had shaken European leaders attending a Balkans summit.

Police made the grisly discovery in the 7.5-tonne lorry stopped on the A4 motorway near the town of Parndorf, apparently since Wednesday, Hans Peter Doskozil, police chief in the province of Burgenland, told a news conference.

He said he could not put an exact figure on the number of victims, whose bodies had begun to decompose.

“We can assume that it could be 20 people who died. It could also be 40, it could be 50 people,” he said.

“We are of course all shaken by the appalling news. This reminds us that we must tackle quickly the issue of immigration and in a European spirit — that means in a spirit of solidarity — and to find solutions,” Merkel said.

Investigations were under way in Austria and Hungary after the bodies were discovered. The truck had Hungarian number plates, a Hungarian official said.

Austrian Interior Minister Johann Mikl-Leitner called it “a dark day” and underscored Vienna’s demand that the European Union adopt a way to distribute a wave of refugees fairly so that they would not have to turn to human traffickers.

“This is a signal on the European level to act as quickly as possible here,” she told the news conference, adding controls on international trains and border areas had been stepped up.

“It will certainly be a central task to protect our outer borders better,” European Commissioner Johannes Hahn told the conference, reiterating that Brussels will propose within weeks a fresh look at the situation.

“We will have another go at quotas. I hope that in the light of the most recent developments now there is a readiness among all the 28 (member states) to agree on this,” he said.

German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier, whose country expects 800,000 asylum seekers this year, said a fair distribution of refugees was needed to ensure support in countries taking in the bulk of migrants.

“That is why it is so important to make progress here. We need the same standards and processes, we need the commitment of all states to carry out early registration,” he said.

His Austrian counterpart Sebastian Kurz said: “If we are not able to find a quick European solution here, then more and more countries like Hungary and Denmark — who are already doing it — will try to solve this crisis for themselves on their own with individual measures and their own initiatives.