Hungary's right-wing government shut the main land route for migrants into the European Union on Tuesday, September 15 taking matters into its own hands to halt Europe's influx of refugees, Reuters reports.

An emergency effort led by Germany to force EU member states to accept mandatory quotas of refugees collapsed in discord.

Chancellor Angela Merkel appealed for European unity after one of her ministers called for financial penalties against countries that refused to accommodate their share of the migrants, provoking anger in central Europe.

A Czech official described such threats as empty but nonetheless "damaging" while Slovakia said they would bring the "end of the EU".

Under new rules that took effect from midnight, Hungary said anyone seeking asylum on its southern border with Serbia, the EU's external frontier, would automatically be turned back, and anyone trying to sneak through would face jail.

At the border, migrants barred from continuing their long journey north towards a new life in Germany chanted as the sun went down, and one held up a banner saying: "Mama Merkel, please help us!"

Families with small children sat in fields beneath the new 3.5-metre- (10-foot-) high fence, topped with razor wire, which blocks entry for migrants to the former communist country. Migrants who tried to apply for asylum in a transit zone of metal containers were swiftly turned away.

Prime Minister Viktor Orban, one of the continent's loudest opponents of mass immigration, says he is acting to save Europe's "Christian values" by blocking the main overland route used by mainly Muslim refugees, who travel through the Balkans and cross his country mainly to reach Germany or Sweden.

Amnesty International accused Hungary of "showing the ugly face of Europe's shambolic response" to the crisis.

The great migration has led to the unraveling of one of the 28-member EU's signature achievements, its Schengen system of border-free travel across much of the continent.

Record arrivals forced Berlin to reimpose emergency frontier controls this week, with several neighbors swiftly following suit. Austria, next on the road from Hungary to Germany, said tougher border measures would take effect at midnight.

Germany stepped up the pressure on EU states resisting the plan to spread refugees around the bloc under a mandatory quota system. Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere said the EU should penalize countries that reject quotas.