Austria to build border fence with Slovenia amid refugee crisis

Interior minister Johanna Mikl-Leitner told Austrian radio on Wednesday morning that Austria needed to be prepared in case the flow of migrants and refugees worsens. Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere announced that, while Syrian citizens are mostly accepted, numerous Afghans pouring into the country will likely be sent back to their homeland.

Fischer said there is nothing set on the possibility of building a fence along parts of his country’s border.

Austria threatened on Tuesday (27 October) to erect “technical barriers” at its border with Slovenia, and has been accused of waving migrants on to Germany’s Bavaria region, which itself threatened to close its border with Austria.

“Usually we don’t comment on political statements, but the fact is that if Austria receives 11,000 people in Spielfeld on a daily basis, Bavaria can not say that it will just process up to 50 people an hour at its border”.

Germany and Poland may not share a common language or currency, but they do share an open border.

The EU’s Schengen passport-free area is cherished as one of its most important achievements and the Commission has repeatedly expressed concern that re-imposing border controls threatens its future.

Mikl-Leitner – who last week said it was time to build “fortress Europe” – pointed the finger at Germany, which is expecting up to one million asylum-seekers this year, saying border police there processed too few migrants and criticising Chancellor Angela Merkel’s open-door policy. “The fact is that the majority want to go to Germany, because they feel they have been invited”, Mikl-Leitner said.

The Slovenian government has been holding crisis talks since around 85,000 refugees entered the small country within the last 10 days, after Hungary closed its Croatia border, leaving no other route for the asylum seekers to continue their journeys.

His coalition partner, Vice Chancellor Reinhold Mitterlehner, a conservative, said another aim of the measure was to discourage migrants from coming.

Slovenia has said that about 14,500 migrants were now in the tiny Alpine state, hoping to continue their journey to Austria later in the day or on Wednesday.

Meanwhile, tensions are running high on both sides of the German-Austrian border.

“We observed that refugees, without warning and after dark, were being driven to the German border without any provisions or forethought”.

Speaking at a press conference, he told reporters:”Austria’s recent behaviour is out of line”. Britain was the first major Western country to get behind China’s Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, paving the way for other European Union countries including Germany and causing friction with the U.S. “The German police didn’t explain why, and now, my family is cut in two”, he said.