Austria firm on migrants

Vienna – Austria will follow the US and Hungary in backing out of a United Nations (UN) migration pact over concerns it will blur the line between legal and illegal migration, the right-wing government said yesterday.

The Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration was approved in July by all 193 member nations except the US, which backed out last year.

Hungary’s right-wing government has since said it will not sign the final document at a ceremony in Morocco in December. Poland, which has also clashed with Brussels by resisting national quotas for asylum seekers, has said it is considering the same step.

“Austria will not join the UN migration pact,” Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz, a conservative and immigration hardliner who governs in coalition with the far-right Freedom Party, said.

“We view some points of the migration pact very critically, such as the mixing up of seeking protection with labour migration,” said Kurz, who argues that migrants rescued in the Mediterranean should not be brought straight to Europe.

Austria will not send an envoy to the signing ceremony in Morocco and will abstain at a UN General Assembly vote on the pact next year.