BICSKE, Hungary — Stepping back from a confrontation with asylum-seekers that drew condemnation from throughout Europe, Hungary will use buses to ferry thousands of migrants from Budapest to the border with Austria, a senior government official said Friday.

The government’s fierce attitude to asylum-seekers fleeing war and poverty sent more than a thousand of them on a long march across the nation in a bid to reach Western Europe, where they hope for better lives. The turnaround was a major admission of defeat for Hungarian authorities, who had sought to make their nation a bulwark against what they say is a tide of Muslim migration that threatens to overwhelm Europe.

In recent days authorities had tried to halt their journey by stopping rail traffic, penning them in migrant camps and bolstering security at the border.



“The European Union has proved to be inadequate to address the situation,” said Janos Lazar, the Hungarian prime minister's chief of staff, in an address in parliament. He said that the decision had been made to ensure the country’s transportation security. More than a thousand men, women and children who set out on the 100-mile walk to the border on Friday have forced shut the country’s main highway to Western Europe.

But as night settled on Hungary and the long column of migrants kept moving toward Austria, many questions remained, such as who might pick them up on the border. Hungarian authorities said they had made a unilateral decision and had not heard back from Austrian authorities. Austria's Interior Ministry, meanwhile, had warned Austrian citizens earlier on Friday that they faced stiff penalties for transporting the asylum-seekers under anti-smuggling regulations.