Austria caps migrants, agrees to ‘cooperate better’ with Greece
VIENNA: Austria on Friday introduced a daily cap on asylum-seekers, sparking EU fears of a domino effect along the Balkan migrant trail and a threat from Greece to veto an accord keeping Britain in the bloc.
A maximum of 80 migrants per day are now being allowed to claim asylum in Austria, and Vienna is also limiting the daily number of people transiting through to seek asylum elsewhere to 3,200. The arrival of more than a million refugees and migrants in Europe last year has caused a chain reaction of border clampdowns among several member states.
As the main gateway into the EU, Greece has been struggling to cope with the new arrivals and fears new restrictions by other members will leave tens of thousands of people stranded on its territory. But EU sources said Greece had reached an informal agreement with Austria to ‘cooperate better’ on migration.
Faced with being excluded from the EU’s passport-free Schengen zone, Greece had pinned its hopes on the EU and Turkey fir ming up ade alto stem the migration flow at a special summit on March 6.
“We areas king for a unanimous decision that until March 6, no state will unilaterally close its borders. If not, the Greek government will not approve
We are asking for a unanimous decision that until March 6, no state will unilaterally close its borders. If not, the Greek government will not approve the conclusion text. — Greek government source
the conclusion text,” a Greek government source told AFP Friday before the reform deal was reached. But EU sources said Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras’s concerns eased after meeting with Austrian Chancellor Werner Fey man non the sidelines of an EU summit in Brussels.
The pair reached ‘ an agreement to cooperate better’ on migration, an EU source told AFP on condition of anonymity. ‘Tsipras seemed happy with the outcome.’ Another EU source told AFP that Austria would not close its borders before the EU-Turkey summit.
Under a German-backed EU proposal to be discussed in March, Turkey would curb the flow of migrants and then fly refugees to Europe for resettlement in exchange for three billion euros (US$3.3 billion).
However, central European countries are opposing the resettlement scheme and are instead pushing to seal Greece off from the Schengen zone. Deep rifts within the 28-nation EU have opened in the face of Europe’s biggest migration crisis since World War II.
More than 80,000 people – many of them children – have endured the perilous journey across the Aegean Sea since January, most fleeing war and violence in Syria, Afghanistan and Iraq.
Brussels on Friday clinched a deal to keep Britain from potentially leaving the EU by giving it ‘ special status’ in the bloc, including allowing London to limit welfare payments for migrants. But Austria’s move to cap migrant numbers has sparked an angry reaction from Brussels, which called it ‘incompatible’ with EU law. — AFP