during the european migrant crisis of 2014-2015 hundreds of thousands of syrian refugees of the syrian civil war entered germany to seek refugee status. the european migrant crisis was especially accelerated when on 4 september 2015, chancellor werner faymann of austria, in conjunction with chancellor angela merkel of germany, announced that migrants would be allowed to cross the border from hungary into austria and onward to germany, and early on 5 september 2015, buses with migrants began crossing the austro-hungarian border.