Austrians defy Merkel’s ‘open door’ policy with refugee exercise
AUSTRIA held a large-scale border patrol exercise yesterday in a symbolic show of defiance against Angela Merkel’s “open door” refugee policy in Germany.
On the Austrian border with Slovenia, 200 soldiers and 500 policemen practised stopping refugees, in an hour and a half-long exercise that saw police trainees pretending to cross the border and being turned back.
“A state that cannot protect its borders effectively loses its credibility,” Herbert Kickl, Austria’s interior minister and a member of the far-right Freedom party, told reporters.
The training took place in Spielfeld, where thousands of refugees crossed the border in 2015 after the German chancellor introduced her controversial open door refugee policy.
The move led to Austria taking in one of the biggest shares of asylum seekers in Europe.
Describing the training exercise as a “major police and army” event, Heinzchristian Strache, Austria’s vice-chancellor and a Freedom party politician, said it would send a “clear signal” that Austria wants to protect the country’s borders.
There “will no longer be a loss of control and free passage like in 2015”, Mr Strache told Germany’s Bild tabloid newspaper. The move comes as Mrs Merkel is embroiled in a row with her interior minister over German border controls.
Earlier this month, Mrs Merkel blocked plans by Horst Seehofer, a Christian Social Union politician, to turn away migrants, who are already registered in other EU countries, at the German border.
In response, Mr Seehofer threatened to take unilateral action if Mrs Merkel fails to find a European solution by the end of this week’s EU summit.
The shock move was an unprecedented challenge to Mrs Merkel’s authority and has left her political future hanging in the balance.
Mr Seehofer knows that Austria, which last year elected a Right-wing coalition government on the promise of implementing stricter rules for asylum seekers, is on his side.
Sebastian Kurz, the Austrian Chancellor, is even expected to speak during the forthcoming Bavarian election campaign, instead of Mrs Merkel – a first in the nearly 70-year history of the union parties.
A “mini-summit” of more than half of the EU’S leaders, called by Mrs Merkel, and held in Brussels last weekend, ended with no clear resolution.
Meanwhile, in the Mediterranean, a deadlock over the fate of a migrant rescue ship, the Lifeline, with 230 migrants on board appeared close to being resolved after Malta agreed to accept the vessel.
Matteo Salvini, Italy’s interior minister, who has vowed to cut dramatically the number of migrants reaching Italy from Libya, was triumphant, claiming it as another victory in his campaign against asylum seekers.
Last week, he succeeded in blocking Italy’s ports to another NGO rescue ship, the Aquarius.
The vessel was eventually accepted by Spain and allowed to dock in Valencia. “That’s number two!” Mr Salvini,
‘Mr Strache said it would send a clear signal that Austria wants to protect its borders’
the head of the hard-right League party, wrote on Twitter.
Malta said it would accept the Lifeline as long as the migrants were shared out among other European Union countries.
“A European solution may be to have the ship dock in Malta. It is the solution that seems to be shaping up at the moment,” said Benjamin Griveaux, a French government spokesman.
“France would then be ready to send a team there to study individual (asylum) requests,” he said.