Germany to Spend $6.6B on Refugees, Migrants

Germany will spend around $6.6 billion on some 800,000 migrants and refugees expected to have crossed into the country by the end of 2015, the government said early Monday.

The announcement by Chancellor Angela Merkel's coalition government came after Germany and neighboring Austria threw open their borders to the wave of refugees making their way north and west from the Middle East, Africa and elsewhere. Hungary has been letting the human tide move on after holding it up for days.

Also on Monday, French President Francois Hollande said his country would welcome 24,000 refugees, and that he and Merkel had agreed on a mechanism to spread the migrant load across Europe.

On Sunday, a convoy of around 140 cars and vans filled with food and water left Vienna to collect exhausted migrants, many from Syria, who had set out to walk the 110-mile stretch through the rain from Hungary's capital Budapest to the Austrian border, from where many would continue onto Germany.

Copyright AP - Associated Press
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