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Criticisms of Kurz: “You cannot escape responsibility”
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Austrian Chancellor Report: EU Refugee Policy Fails
Austrian Chancellor Kurz rejects the use of terms such as solidarity in the immigration debate. Calls for better protection of the EU’s external borders and a more effective fight against human traffickers.
Even before the EU Commission could present its new proposals for EU asylum reform, Austria’s Chancellor Sebastian Kurz rejected them as “failed”. Now there are criticisms from Berlin: without a common agreement on solidarity, it would not work.
meEurope’s Minister of State Michael Roth (SPD) has criticized Austria’s Chancellor Sebastian Kurz for rejecting the distribution of refugees in the EU. “Now I would advise everyone not to veto and block immediately,” Roth told Deutschlandfunk on Wednesday before the EU Commission’s new plans for a European asylum reform were presented. “You can’t just shirk responsibility.”
The President of the EU Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, has called on the governments of the EU states to support new proposals to reform European asylum and migration policy. “The old system … no longer works,” he said in Brussels on Wednesday. “Europe needs to move away from ad hoc solutions and introduce a predictable and reliable system to manage migration.”
The proposals presented by his authority on Wednesday are pragmatic and realistic and provide for a “fair and adequate balance between responsibility and solidarity between the Member States”. “Together we have to show that Europe manages migration humanely and effectively,” said von der Leyen.
Michael Roth (SPD) advises everyone “not to veto immediately”
Quelle: dpa / Aris Oikonomou
One of the focal points of the new proposals are measures for the effective deportation of rejected asylum seekers. Countries like Hungary and Poland should only be obliged to accept migrants in absolutely exceptional cases. At the same time, the EU Commission wants all EU states to make a contribution to the common migration policy, but this can also be done through personal or financial support.
Austrian Chancellor Kurz had declared on Tuesday that the distribution of refugees in the EU had been “unsuccessful”. “Many states reject that. That won’t work either, “said the conservative politician. He welcomed the Commission’s new approach to the issue of migration. However, Kurz rejected the use of terms like “solidarity” in the immigration debate.
Roth said, however, that the EU has experienced lockdowns on the issue for the past five years since the height of the refugee crisis. “It will not work without a common understanding of solidarity, humanity and shared responsibility.”
