Thousands of migrants are arriving
in mainland Greece as the government prepares for talks on tackling the
huge number of people reaching its shores.
Two ships carrying more than 4,200 people travelled to Piraeus port at night after leaving Lesbos island.
The whole EU is struggling to deal with an unprecedented influx of migrants.
Hundreds
of people, mostly from the Middle East, remain stranded outside a
railway station in Hungary after police stopped them travelling through
the EU.
The EU's border control agency, Frontex, says 23,000 migrants arrived in Greece last week alone - an increase of 50% on the previous week.
More than 160,000 people have arrived in Greece so far this year - already surpassing last year's total.
The country's government says it lacks the resources to look after
that many arrivals, but aid groups say authorities should be doing more.
On
Tuesday, Greek President Prokopis Pavlopoulos called his French
counterpart Francois Hollande and asked that the situation facing Greece
be discussed at a senior European level.
Greece's caretaker cabinet is set to convene later on Wednesday.
Many of those arriving in the country do so on the island of Lesbos, where, according to the Kathimerini newspaper, 17,500 migrants were registered in the last week.
One ferry carrying 1,749 migrants travelling from Lesbos arrived in the port of Piraeus, near Athens, late on Tuesday.
One of the passengers, a Syrian teacher named Isham, told Reuters news agency: "You have to help us. We are human."
Another, with close to 2,500 on board, was due to arrive early on Wednesday. Analysis by BBC's chief correspondent Gavin Hewitt
The migrant crisis has overwhelmed Europe's leaders. There is no plan.
Existing
rules for processing people where they arrive have been discarded.
Temporary border controls have re-emerged on what are supposed to be
passport-free borders. Fences are being strengthened.
There is tension and finger-pointing. One prime minister accused other leaders of "not telling the truth" about the migrants.
What
is clear is that the heads of government will face some hugely
sensitive decisions that will determine whether an open Europe can
survive.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel says the migrant crisis "will challenge us far more than Greece and the stability of the euro". Read more from Gavin Hewitt
Under
an EU rule known as the Dublin Regulation, refugees should seek asylum
in the first EU country they enter. But Italy and Greece - the main
landing points - say they cannot cope with the numbers and many migrants
head north.
On Monday, Hungary had appeared to abandon efforts to
register migrants, allowing huge numbers to board trains at Keleti
station in east Budapest and travel to Vienna and southern Germany.
But police evacuated the station on Tuesday, leaving about 1,000 migrants outside.
Media captionDamian Grammaticas reports from Budapest: ''Their way barred, their frustrations boiled over''
Image caption
Migrants wave their train tickets outside Keleti station in Budapest
Image caption
Many families bedded down near Keleti station, wondering what to do next
The number of migrants entering Europe has reached record levels, with 107,500 arriving in July alone.
Germany expects to take in 800,000 migrants this year - four times last year's total.
The
German government has already said it will allow Syrians arriving from
other EU states to apply for asylum. But on Tuesday, a spokesman said
the Dublin Regulation had not been suspended.
"Dublin rules are still valid and we expect European member states to stick to them," an interior ministry spokesman said.
The
risks for migrants travelling through Europe were highlighted last week
by the deaths of 71 people found in a lorry that had travelled to
Austria from Budapest.
As a result, Austria reintroduced border controls at main crossings from Hungary.
EU interior and justice ministers will meet in Brussels on 14 September to address the crisis.
27 August: Hundreds of people are feared dead after two boats carrying about 500 migrants sink in the Mediterranean,
off Libya; more than 300,000 migrants have risked their lives trying to
cross the Mediterranean this year, according to the UN
27 August: A lorry abandoned near Parndorf in Austria is found to have 71 dead people inside, including four children
28 August: Twenty-six migrants are rescued from a van in Austria, near the border with Germany
1 September: Hundreds of migrants arrive by train in Munich, after Hungary abandons efforts to register them
Are you in Greece? Are you affected by the issues raised in this story? Let us know about your experiences. Email haveyoursay@bbc.co.uk with your stories. Please include a contact number if you are willing to speak to a BBC journalist. You can also contact us in the following ways:
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