Slovenia said on Friday it wants to limit the daily number of migrants entering at 580, in line with an agreement between police chiefs of countries along the Balkan route.

"All police chiefs (from the region) who attended the February 18 meeting committed to respect the cap of around 580 migrants per day," Slovenian interior ministry spokeswoman Vesna Drole told AFP.

In a new blow to the EU's cherished open-border Schengen accord, Austria announced Friday it would erect a 3.7-kilometer (2.3-mile) metal fence along its border with Slovenia to better manage a record influx of migrants and refugees.

The barrier, due to be completed in less than six weeks, will be the first fence between two members of the passport-free zone.

Austria said Wednesday it would build a fence along its border with fellow EU state Slovenia to "control" the migrant influx, in what would be the first barrier between two members of the passport-free Schengen zone.

Both countries have become key transit points for tens of thousands of refugees and migrants seeking to reach northern Europe, as they try desperately to outrun winter and get ahead of more potential EU border closures.

Slovenia says it is considering building a border fence to help stem a record influx of migrants and refugees, as thousands more people arrived from Croatia on Friday.

The small Alpine nation has become the main entry point into the European Union's passport-free Schengen zone after Hungary sealed its southern borders with razor-wire fences to stop migrants desperately trying to reach northern Europe before winter sets in.

The EU's migration commissioner is to visit new migrant hotspot Slovenia on Thursday to discuss its request for urgent support, as the small nation buckled under a record surge of refugees desperate to reach northern Europe before winter.

Slovenia is now the main entry point into the passport-free Schengen zone on the migrant trail, after Hungary sealed its key southern borders with razor-wire fence to migrants.

Thousands of migrants kept streaming Monday into the Balkans, where tighter border controls caused bottlenecks, as the German government braced for an anniversary rally of the xenophobic PEGIDA movement, accusing it of spewing "hate and poison".

The unprecedented refugee wave into Europe has seen asylum seekers -- mostly fleeing war in Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan -- traveling via Turkey, Greece and through the western Balkans, hoping to seek safe haven in Germany and other EU states.

Croatia on Saturday diverted the flow of thousands of migrants toward Slovenia after Hungary sealed its border to block the path of the streams of refugees desperate to reach northern Europe.

Slovenia received the first buses from Croatia transporting the migrants as a much-hyped EU deal with Turkey to defuse the crisis -- which has seen some 600,000 mostly Syrian migrants enter the EU this year -- began to look shaky.

Thousands of migrants sought their way through a chaotic maze of rumor and proliferating border controls in the western Balkans on Saturday.

In the latest chapter in the EU's escalating refugee crisis, Croatia, Hungary and Slovenia tussled over how to cope with a wave of refugees desperate to reach northern Europe.

Slovenia on Friday allowed a former prime minister of Kosovo to return home, after he was held there on an Interpol warrant issued by Serbia, his party said.

Ramush Haradinaj was "expected to arrive in Kosovo during the day," the opposition Alliance for the Future of Kosovo (AAK) said.

Kosovo lawmakers voted a resolution Thursday demanding Slovenia unconditionally return a former Kosovo prime minister held there on an Interpol warrant issued by Serbia.

The resolution said Kosovo's government and president "urgently require the Slovenian authorities to immediately return (his) diplomatic passport and unconditionally allow the return" of Ramush Haradinaj to Kosovo.