Austrian
migrant cap bogs down EU summit
Vienna
goes it alone as EU leaders hold marathon migration talks.
By JACOPO BARIGAZZI
AND BARBARA SURK 2/19/16, 12:42 AM CET Updated 2/19/16, 4:05 AM CET
After a lengthy and
heated debate on migration, European leaders agreed Friday that
Turkey remains key to an EU plan to tackle what has become the
largest refugee crisis since the end of World War II.
European Council
President Donald Tusk set another migration summit for early March
with Turkey as its star guest.
“We agreed that
our joint action plan with Turkey remains a priority, and we must do
all we can to succeed,” he said. “This is why we have the
intention to organize a special meeting with Turkey in the beginning
of March.”
But Austria was not
willing to wait another day for a common EU solution.
Before European
leaders sat down to eat Thursday, Austria ruined everyone’s
appetite by announcing a cap on asylum-seekers — and defiantly
sticking to its guns throughout a six-hour dinner, despite fierce
criticism from fellow European leaders at the dinner table.
The EU migration
commissioner, Dimitris Avramopoulos, told Vienna its decision to
limit the number of asylum applications it is ready to accept was
illegal and “plainly incompatible with Austria’s obligations”
under EU and international law.
Austrian Chancellor
Werner Faymann tried to put a brave face on the onslaught at dinner,
telling reporters “there was both criticism and understanding” at
the table. He said he backed up his argument with simple math. “I
made it clear, if everyone took as much as Austria is willing to,
37,500,” that would be over a million per year, Faymann said.
He argued that order
was breaking down under the weight of the more than 90,000 people who
claimed asylum in Austria last year and the hundreds more who have
done so since the start of 2016.
Thousands more
transit each day through Austria, which is on the Balkan route to
Germany and other European states in the north, so Vienna decided to
consult its own lawyers to find a way to cope.
“Legal opinions
will be answered by lawyers. Politically I say: We’ll stick to it,”
Faymann told reporters at the summit, where EU leaders hoped to reach
consensus on dealing with the migration crisis. “It’s
unimaginable Austria would accept all refugees.”
The problem of
redistributing refugees across EU countries was also a topic during
the summit dinner when leaders discussed migration. Italy’s Matteo
Renzi warned Eastern European countries that if they are not ready to
show solidarity in taking migrants, then Western EU countries could
show less solidarity in distributing money across the bloc, said one
diplomat.
In addition to the
cap on asylum-seekers, Austria will limit the number of migrants
entering the country to 3,200 a day, starting Friday, according to
Johanna Mikl-Leitner, the country’s interior minister.
Domino effect
Austria got some
support from its southern neighbor on the Balkan route, Slovenia,
despite a risk that Vienna’s ever tighter controls of its border
could result in a backlog further south, in Croatia, Serbia and
Macedonia.
But in the
conclusions the leaders called for an end to “uncoordinated
measures along the route” — a sentence that was added after the
discussion at dinner about Austria; a discussion described by a EU
official who was in the room as “frank but constructive.”
The possibility of
saying “we don’t take refugees” doesn’t exit, said the
official. “Under the Geneva convention, it exists when the boat is
full, but the boat in Austria is not full.”
“Austria is under
a lot of pressure in the migrant crisis and Slovenia understands
that,” Slovenian Prime Minister Miro Cerar told reporters in
Brussels. “Whether their decisions to cope with the crisis were the
right ones is a different question.”
Mikl-Leitner told
state broadcaster ORF that an offensive against Vienna in Brussels
was “unjustified.”
German Chancellor
Merkel Gives A Joint Press Conference With Austrian Chancellor
Faymann
“My legal experts
say that we are in line with the law,” Mikl-Leitner said.
“Those fleeing
violence and persecution should seek international protection after
crossing into the first safe country in their path of flight,”
Mikl-Leitner said, adding that Austria is not that country.
“If all countries
respected that we would not have this problem and we wouldn’t need
to have taken measures at national level,” Mikl-Leitner said,
adding that Austria will admit no more than 37,500 asylum seekers —
about 80 a day starting Friday — this year.
“If there are more
than 80 people, they will have to wait in Slovenia until there is
space available,” Mikl-Leitner said.
EU officials fear
Austria’s move could create a domino effect along the Western
Balkan route.
European Council
President Donald Tusk discussed measures other countries could be
taking along the way, fearing the end result could be shutting down
the border between Greece and Macedonia, a non-EU member struggling
to cope with thousands of migrants crossing from Greece.
Slovenia’s Cerar
said the intention was to create an “additional layer of control
that would stop all those illegal migrants, who would break through
the first layer of the Greek-Turkish border.”
“The plan is to
boost control of EU’s exterior borders and that means that we have
to help Greece with all means available to stop the relentless flow
of refugees,” Cerar said. “We need to do everything to implement
the agreement with Turkey. Second part of the proposal is my own, and
that is an additional layer of control on the Greek-Macedonian
border.”
Other countries
complained their countries were reaching a limit, too. “Last year
alone we received more than 20,000 migrants in Denmark,” said
Danish Prime Minister Lars Løkke Rasmussen. “We are at our very
limit and now it’s time for other countries to step up and take
responsibility. It cannot be up to Germany, Denmark, Finland and a
few other countries to solve this crises.”
German Chancellor
Angela Merkel said there was broad agreement that the EU should
continue to work toward a solution with Turkey to halt the flow of
refugees coming into the EU. The EU reached an agreement with Ankara
in late November but the arrangement has yet to have a noticeable
impact on the refugee flow.
Some in the EU have
accused Turkey of shirking its responsibilities under the deal.
Merkel had hoped to address the problems at a meeting with Turkish
Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu before the summit, but Wednesday’s
terrorist attack in Ankara forced him to cancel his trip to Brussels.
Instead, Merkel said Turkey’s role would be the focus of the
special summit in early March. “Our priority is to achieve these
goals,” she said, referring to what has become known as the
EU-Turkey Action Plan.
Merkel played down
suggestions of a rift with Austria, disputing reports that the debate
over Vienna’s latest measures to limit the refugee influx was
“heated.”
“We are all
partners in Europe,” she said. “This is a decision for Austria to
make.”
The Austrian
government’s move to impose daily caps “reminded us how urgent it
is for us to find solutions,” she said.
Maïa de la Baume,
Matthew Karnitschnig and Hans von der Burchard contributed to this
article.
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