Austria gives skeptical response to German migrant deal

Austria responded skeptically Tuesday to a deal proposed in neighbouring Germany to end an internal government crisis over migration, demanding details and warning Berlin it wouldn’t participate in any arrangement that goes against its own interests.

In a compromise Monday night to end a dispute that had ballooned into a threat to German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s fourth government, Merkel’s party and its Bavarian conservative ally called for “transit centres’’ on the German-austrian border.

The idea is that migrants who already registered in another European Union country would be sent back from the centres under as-yet unexecuted agreements with other European governments.

Austria is important because the German deal states that when another EU country won’t accept someone with a pending asylum application, Germany still would reject them at the border “on the basis of an agreement’’ with Vienna.

Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz, whose right-wing government takes a hard line on migration, said German Interior Minister Horst Seehofer planned to be in Vienna on Thursday to discuss what Germany wants. Kurz sounded distinctly unenthusiastic Tuesday.

“Our big aim is to reduce illegal migration,’’ Kurz, whose country holds the EU’S rotating presidency, said. “So we have sympathy in principle for all ideas that go in this direction, but of course, not at the expense of Austria and its population.’’