EU warns Austria that plan to cap asylum seekers is unlawful

Feb 19, 2016, 18:02
EU warns Austria that plan to cap asylum seekers is unlawful

"(So) we will have to reduce these upper limits further." she said, adding that the daily cap on claims only applied to people arriving at the southern border on the main migrant route into Europe.

"Slovenia will follow (Austria's) quotas with new measures", Interior Minister Vesna Gyorkos Znidar told a news conference in Ljubljana.

The country has largely served as a corridor into neighbouring Germany for the hundreds of thousands of people, many of them Syrian refugees, who have streamed onto its territory since the two countries threw open their borders to them in September.

Austria has been a favored transit point for many migrants and asylum seekers on their way to Germany and other European countries in the past year.

Merkel said in Berlin that "we will speak at the upcoming EU Council about how we can work together to protect our external border, and I want us to work together on the EU-Turkish agenda that 28 members have decided".

"We must act now", he added.

He said measures agreed would be implemented as of Thursday.

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Mikl-Leitner said the cooperation with Slovenia in particular has up to now been "exemplary". The highway there is one of the busiest commercial thoroughfares between Italy and Northern Europe.

The daily limit on asylum claims is in line with last month's announcement that it would only take in 37,500 asylum seekers this year.

EU leaders reaffirmed at the Brussels summit there was no alternative to a common European approach to the migration wave that exposed deep differences in the EU.

However, most European Union countries have shown little enthusiasm for the plan, with the so-called Visegrad Four (V4) - Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Hungary - openly defying Merkel. False information that Austria had stopped letting in refugees and migrants led to a brief closure of the Macedonian-Greek border, according to the United Nations.

Austria has vowed to stick with its plan to cap the number of migrants it will allow to cross its borders.

"The aim is to secure the order and stability of our country".

It quotes Interior Minister Johanna Mikl-Leitner that the moves are necessary "as long as there are no viable solutions on the European Union outer borders".

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Mikl-Leitner previously confirmed the Austrian government will go ahead with the plan of limiting asylum requests to only 80 a day beginning this Friday. "We are against nationalist solutions".

The EU has pledged €3bn (£2.3bn; $3.3bn) to Turkey in return for housing refugees on its territory.

The EU is to hold a special summit with Turkey on the migration crisis in early March, officials have announced.

"Once illegal migration has been scaled back, legal migration based on quotas from Turkey can be arranged on a voluntary basis", Merkel said.

More than 1 million people entered the European Union in 2015 fleeing conflict or poverty, and some 84,000 have entered so far this year. That is an allusion to Germany which, along with Sweden, has been the preferred destination for most migrants.

The "joint action plan with Turkey remains a priority and we must do all we can to succeed", he said.

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