Greek Alternate Minister of Immigration Policy Ioannis Mouzalas told Austrian newspaper Wiener Zeitung that he felt deep sorrow and great anger for the EU as a whole on the refugee crisis. The minister said the refugee problem was not caused by Greece and therefore not a Greek issue, but a European one. ‘We cannot accept this politically. It is a European problem, a crisis in Europe as a whole’, said Mouzalas. He continued by noting that Greece was doing everything in its powers to deal with the dramatic situation on the northern borders of the country. He stressed that he was unpleasantly surprised by Austria unilaterally ignoring prior EU decisions to keep borders open for the free movement of refugees to the north, which caught Greece unprepared to deal with the swelling numbers of refugees on its borders and the resulting humanitarian crisis. He predicted that the situation would deteriorate while the numbers of refugees crossing into the Greek islands from Turkey were not put under control. He said the if the number of trapped refugees and migrants in Greece would reach 70,000 this would be straining the country’s ability to cope with them in terms of infrastructure.