EU to hold migration summit with Turkey in early March

Austria raised the prospect of even tighter limits on the number of asylum seekers entering the country Friday while Hungary said it is shutting three railway border crossings with Croatia, highlighting the disarray within the European Union over migrants.

“Politically I say we’ll stick with it…it is unthinkable for Austria to take on the asylum seekers for the whole of Europe”, Austria’s Chancellor Werner Faymann said on arriving at an European Union leaders’ summit in Brussels.

With the refugee influx expected to increase in coming months as weather conditions improve, European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker expressed exasperation at the move, and reportedly said that the cap on asylum claims would break EU and global humanitarian laws. “In Europe we are all always partners”, she said. Austria is allowing a maximum 80 people a day to apply for asylum at its southern border points as of Friday, a move it took despite claims it was illegal.

Mikl-Leitner said the country plans to extend border controls to Italy as it plans for possible shifts in migrant inflows to the country.

The ceiling on asylum applications, Avramopoulos said, “would be plainly incompatible with Austria’s (legal) obligations”.

She said the EU “must see quickly if measures work” under the plan agreed at another EU-Turkey summit in November, in which Turkey agreed to cut migrant flows in exchange for 3 billion ($5 billion) in aid.

“We can not cope with the number of asylum applications that we had past year”.

Refugees line up at a transit area between Austria and Slovenia at a border crossing in Spielfeld, Austria on December 9, 2015. Mikl-Leitner responded by pointing out that Germany has also used daily quotas.

Since the beginning of the refugee crisis previous year, the European Commission strongly recommended state members welcome refugees and distribute them evenly among each country, but some EU countries such as Austria have completely closed their borders.

A meeting with Turkey and the leaders of 11 European Union countries had been planned before the European Union summit on Thursday, but was cancelled after Turkey’s premier Ahmet Davutoglu pulled out following a bomb attack in Ankara.

Merkel noted Austria backed the plan, despite its unilateral decision to introduce daily caps on migrants. “This is why we have the intention to organise a special meeting with Turkey at the beginning of March”, he said.

Austria also did not want to place too great a burden too soon on Balkan states between it and Greece, with which Vienna is coordinating a “domino effect” of restrictions, she said.

Greece is relying on Berlin’s support for an EU-Turkish deal to stem migrant flows coupled with a resettlement scheme.