Trains carrying hundreds of migrants started arriving in Vienna on Monday after Austrian authorities appeared to give up trying to apply European Union rules by filtering out refugees who had already claimed asylum in Hungary.
In the latest twist in a humanitarian and political crisis that is now testing the survival of both Europe's open-border regime and its asylum rules, Hungary allowed the refugees, many of them fleeing Syria's civil war, to cram into at least four trains leaving Budapest for Austria or Germany.
Many of the refugees arriving in Vienna railway station on Monday evening immediately raced to board trains heading on to Germany, as policemen looked on passively, preferring not to intervene, witnesses said.