By SIMON TOMLINSON FOR MAILONLINE

PUBLISHED: 06:49 EST, 9 March 2016 | UPDATED: 09:45 EST, 9 March 2016

Macedonia said it has now closed its doors 'completely' to migrants, leaving thousands trapped in a tented slum on the Greek border.

Skopje had been allowing small numbers of Syrians and Iraqis through, but is now stopping doing so after its neighbours tightened up their policies.

Slovenia and Croatia said last night that no migrants wishing to transit towards other countries would be allowed to enter, while Serbia indicated it would also follow suit.

It means the Balkan trail used by floods of migrants was now shut, hiking pressure on the EU and Turkey to nail down a 'game-changing' solution.

Meanwhile, it has been claimed Greece is planning to clear the Idomeni refugee camp and relocate its inhabitants to five different sites.

A Macedonian police official, who declined to be named, said: 'We have completely closed the border.'

According to the Macedonian Interior Ministry, no migrants entered from Greece on Tuesday.

'Macedonia will act according to the decisions taken by other countries on the Balkan route,' an Interior Ministry spokesman said, referring to the main routes taken by more than a million migrants to reach the European Union over the last year.

The decisions were announced hours after EU leaders declared an end to a mass scramble to reach wealthy countries in Europe from war zones along the Balkan route.

Around 1,000 migrants remain stranded in a refugee camp on the Macedonian side of the Serbian border while more than 400 are stranded in 'No Man's Land' between Serbia and Macedonia.

They refuse to go back to Macedonia and are not being allowed to cross in to Serbia.

EU member Slovenia said that from midnight (11pm GMT), the only exceptions were for people wishing to claim asylum in the country or for migrants 'on humanitarian grounds and in accordance with the rules of the Schengen zone'.

Prime Minister Miro Cerar said the move meant that 'the (Balkan) route for illegal migrations no longer exists.'

Croatia's Interior Minister Vlaho Orepic called it a 'new phase in resolving the migrant crisis'.

The measures follow Austria's decision in February to cap the number of migrants passing through its territory and Foreign Minister Sebastian Kurz late Tuesday welcomed the news.

'This is putting into effect what is correct and that is the end of the 'waving through' (of migrants) which attracted so many migrants last year and was the wrong approach,' Kurz told public television.

'As Europe, we must help Greece but we have to make sure that arriving in (the Greek island of) Lesbos doesn't mean a ticket to Germany,' he said.

In Greece, however, the tightening of border restrictions in recent weeks sparked by Austria's move has created a bottleneck at the border with Macedonia.

There was no official reaction from Athens to Slovenia and Croatia's moves, but a Greek government source said it now considered borders through the Balkans as 'de facto closed'.

The authorities were trying 'to convince the refugees that are stuck to go temporarily to welcome centres throughout Greece,' the source said.

More than 14,000 mainly Syrian and Iraqi refugees are camped out by the border crossing at Idomeni - many of them for weeks - at a muddy, unhygienic camp operated by beleaguered aid groups.

Greece has tried to coax migrants south in recent days after the border was closed to everyone apart from those travelling with a valid EU visa.

Campaigners working on the ground at the camp confirmed to MailOnline it would only be a matter of time before officials moved in and closed the camp.

One of the workers said: 'The word is that the camp is going to be closed, and to be honest that has to be a good thing because it's becoming harder and harder to handle the situation here.

'There are simply too many of them and it's growing all the time. I don't see how the officials can do anything else?

'People in this camp are those that are determined to get to the EU as quickly as possible, but the borders are closed.

'They are trying everything, but when they are caught they are simply sent back here.

'There are also those who have been told there was a problem with their documents, and were sent back, but none of them are being given proper information.'

Aid workers have been struggling to clamp down on an outbreak of illness in Idomeni particularly among children, with ambulances being sent from Athens to pick some of the more seriously affected.

As well as being unhygienic, it is also the base from which refugees have been making frequent attempts to illegally cross the border, by cutting holes in the fence and sneaking through.

The site of Macedonian armoured personnel carriers fitted with machine guns stationed along the border has done little to deter them.

Father-of-six Ahmed Hasan, 47, is one of those who accepted a place at a nearby camp together with his wife Syher, 37, who was a maths teacher at their home in the eastern Syrian city of Deir Ezzor before becoming a refugee.

The couple are there with their children including his youngest daughter Drand, who is one year old, Massa aged 5 and his oldest daughter Aya aged 13.

His boys Omar, 11, Maxhit, 10, and Muhamed, 17, were playing football.

He said: 'We have been here five days now. Because of the children, we wouldn't consider putting them through the ordeal of staying in Idomeni. We get fresh fruit and sandwiches every day, and it's much better here than at Idomeni.

'I went there briefly just to see how it was and realised we were much better off here, there are around 1,200 people, and it's a lot cleaner.

'We have all registered and are just waiting to hear when we can be relocated stop without which EU country we end up in, we just want to have a safe life.'

More than a million people have crossed the Aegean Sea into Greece since the start of 2015, many from Syria, Afghanistan and Iraq and most aiming to reach wealthy Germany, Austria and Scandinavia.

This has caused deep divisions among EU members about how to deal with Europe's worst migration crisis since World War Two and put German Chancellor Angela Merkel under severe pressure domestically over her open-door asylum policy.

Merkel hopes that a mooted deal with Turkey discussed at an EU summit on Monday, and due to be finalised on March 17-18, will be the answer, with Turkey offering to take back all illegal migrants landing on the Greek islands.

Turkey, currently hosting 2.7 million refugees escaping the five-year-old civil war in neighbouring Syria, is the main springboard for migrants making the perilous sea crossing to Greece.

Ankara proposed an arrangement under which the EU would resettle one Syrian refugee from camps in Turkey in exchange for every Syrian that Turkey takes from Greece, in a bid to reduce the incentive for people to board boats for Europe.

In return though, Turkey wants €6billion ($6.6billion) in aid, visa-free access for Turkish citizens to Europe's passport-free Schengen zone and a speeding up of Ankara's efforts to join the EU.

European Commission chief Jean-Claude Juncker called the plan a 'real game-changer' and insisted it was 'legally feasible', but it has sparked concern from UN refugee chief Filippo Grandi and others.

'As a first reaction I'm deeply concerned about any arrangement that would involve the blanket return of anyone from one country to another without spelling out the refugee protection safeguards under international law,' Grandi told the European Parliament.

Rights group Amnesty International said the proposal was full of 'moral and legal flaws' and along with Human Rights Watch challenged the idea that Turkey was a 'safe country' to which migrants could return.

Read more: Macedonia closes doors to migrants in Greece as Slovenia, Croatia and Serbia do | Daily Mail Online