Ministers want more border protection: Austria explains EU migration policy

Friday, October 8, 2021

Minister wants more border security
Austria grumbles about EU migration policy

According to Austria’s Interior Minister Nehmer, the debate about the distribution of refugees in the EU is “baseless” at this time. Before that, the outer borders of the union would have to be “rigorously” protected. His country will also not accept any more people of Afghanistan.

Austria sharply criticized the EU’s migration policy ahead of a meeting of EU interior ministers on Friday. “The failure of the European asylum policy is manifesting itself at the EU’s external borders,” said Karl Nehmer, Austrian Interior Minister of the “Die Welt” newspaper. “If we had functional protection of the EU’s external border, hundreds of thousands of migrants would not come into the EU every year.”

Nehamer explicitly praised the fact that member states such as Croatia and Greece did an “excellent” job on the EU’s external borders. “But the EU should not leave these states alone,” the Austrian demanded. “Instead of establishing a functioning external border security system, the EU Commission has been debating the distribution of refugees for six years,” criticized Nehmer. This is “futile, because there will never be any agreement on the issue of distribution without the strict protection of the EU’s external borders.”

The country doesn’t want to take any more Afghans

Nehamer accused Frontex, the EU’s border protection agency, of merely “supervising” the border guards of the Mediterranean countries, rather than actively supporting them. The European Union Commission on Thursday called for an investigation into the allegations after reports of alleged illegal rejection of asylum seekers by border guards in Croatia and Greece. The government in Zagreb promised to do so, while Athens vehemently denied the allegations.

At a meeting of EU interior ministers in Luxembourg, Nehammer announced that he would address “how the European Union, with its economic power of 450 million people, allows transit countries such as Tunisia or Morocco to offload illegal migrants into its territory in the so-called Instead of using organized people as landing platforms, let crime proceed in Europe”. Austria’s interior minister also stressed that his country would not accept any more refugees from Afghanistan. “And not even in the context of so-called rehabilitation,” he told Welt.

Instead, he advocates for “establishing deportation centers for migrants from Afghanistan in neighboring countries in the region”. To do so, however, Europeans would have to be prepared “to create massive incentives for these countries”. Nehmar insisted that 44,000 Afghans were already living in his country. “Only ahead of us in the European Union is Sweden.” It is particularly difficult for Afghans to integrate into the country. According to a study, they were more violent, said the OVP politician.