Austria reinforces security due to migration crisis

Starting from today, migrants who do not express intention to seek asylum in Austria or Germany will not be able to pass through Serbia, Serbian Minister of Social Policy Aleksandar Vulin said Wednesday.

Germany’s increasingly strict border controls have prompted fears of a build-up of migrants in Austria, and the country has often reacted to new German restrictions by introducing similar measures of its own.

Austria declared on Wednesday it would cap the number of people allowed to claim asylum this year at less than half last year’s total, and its chancellor said border controls would have to be stepped up “massively”; but how that would be done was unclear.

In particular, she aims to agree measures to reduce the number of asylum seekers wishing to enter Austria as well as establishing an upper limit for their numbers, she told journalists ahead of a cabinet meeting.

The four-year cap, which represents 1.5% of Austria’s 8.5 million population, was an “emergency solution” serving as a “wake-up call for the EU”, the chancellor added.

But if migrants can be integrated into the labour market, their contribution to the GDPs of Austria, Germany, and Sweden by 2020 could reach 1.1 percent, the International Monetary Fund said.

Some 500 newly deployed troops will assist police in processing up to 6,000 migrants on a daily basis at the Spielfeld crossing in the southern state of Styria, police spokesman Fritz Grundnig told AFP on Tuesday.

Until recently, Faymann had resisted the OeVP’s call for limiting asylum-seekers’ numbers.

The uncoordinated approach is threatening to trigger a “domino effect” of border closings and may provoke “bilateral misunderstandings and possibly more serious tensions” among European Union countries, Slovenian Prime Minister Miro Cerar said in a letter to the bloc’s executive commission on Monday. In case of a spike in numbers, security forces could handle as many as 11,000 people – roughly the average daily number of migrants who crossed into Austria late past year.

Last September, Austria and Germany opened their borders to refugees and migrants fleeing war and poverty in the Middle East, Afghanistan and other conflict-torn regions.

Mr Faymann also said he has discussed the plans “in principle” with German Chancellor Angela Merkel and their counterpart in Slovenia. “If democrats don’t want to talk about limits, populists and xenophobes will march in”.