BREZICE, Slovenia — A day before a European summit on the migrant crisis, Slovenia’s president demanded immediate action from the EU and tempers flared at one overcrowded refugee center as thousands more asylum-seekers poured into the tiny Alpine nation.

European nations have been criticized for being slow to react as hundreds of thousands of people seeking safety pour in through Greece and Italy. But a draft plan submitted to the countries coming to the Sunday summit in Brussels, sent by European Commission President Jean Claude Juncker, was already drawing strong opposition.

A man hugs a child after arriving Saturday with other migrants in a dinghy from Turkey to the Skala Sikaminias village on the northeastern Greek island of Lesbos. The Associated Press

Croatian Prime Minister Zoran Milanovic said the EU plan urges countries not to “wave” asylum-seekers across their borders without consulting with their neighbors.

“That is impossible. Whoever wrote this does not understand how things work and must have just woken up from a monthslong sleep,” he said Saturday.

Slovenia’s president declared that if the EU summit fails to produce an acceptable solution to the crisis, his nation will act on its own.

“Slovenia cannot become a pocket in which refugees would be stuck if the Austrian and German borders close because the country could not handle that,” the state STA news agency quoted President Borut Pahor as saying.

Pahor did not elaborate, but other Slovenian officials have suggested a possible fence along the border with Croatia. Slovenian police estimated Saturday that some 13,000 people had entered the country in the last 24 hours and 58,000 had arrived in the last week.

The leaders of EU members Austria, Bulgaria, Croatia, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Romania and Slovenia have been invited to the Brussels summit along with two nonmembers, Macedonia and Serbia.

On the ground across the Balkans, the biggest problems have emerged when the torrent of refugees is bottlenecked at one border or another. And the numbers of those crossing the seas from Turkey into Greece have surged of late, driven on by a fear of cold weather, cold water and more European border closures.

Milanovic said the only solution to bring the migrant surge under control lies at the border between Turkey and Greece, where the refugees first enter the 28-nation EU.

“Everything else is a waste of time,” he said, adding that EU rules which say refugees should stay in the country where they first enter the bloc are “not realistic.”

At the Brezice camp near the border with Croatia, Slovenian police used pepper spray Saturday to break up a scuffle when a quarrel between two groups of migrants escalated into a fight. Packed behind metal barriers, guarded by riot police and armored vehicles, crowds at Brezice chanted “I need to go!” and demanded more water.

In Libya, the Red Crescent said the bodies of 40 migrants had washed ashore and search efforts were underway for another 30 people who were on the boat that capsized.

With temperatures dropping on the route into Western Europe, it’s been tough going for those seeking a new life.

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