11/27/2023 4:33 pm (current 11/27/2023 4:40 pm)
Interior Minister Karner (lin) met with colleagues from Visegrad ©APA/AFP/POOL
On Monday, Interior Minister Gerhard Karner (ÖVP) and his counterparts from Hungary, the Czech Republic, Poland, Slovakia and Germany agreed on closer coordination in the area of flight and migration, as well as increased surveillance of external borders of the EU. “The more robust – technically and legally – the EU’s external border becomes, the less pressure will be on this border,” Karner said after the talks in Szeged.
The Czech Republic currently chairs the Visegrád Group and has also invited Austria and Germany to the meeting in the Hungarian city on the border with Serbia. Berlin was therefore represented for the first time at ministerial level. The talks also served to prepare the EU Council of Interior Ministers, next week, in Brussels.
German Interior Minister Nancy Faeser said she had agreed with her counterparts to exchange data on irregular migration. “I suggested that regular meetings of border authorities be held to jointly monitor the migration situation,” she said in Szeged. The proposal was accepted by the other participants in the ministerial round.
Karner added: Hungary agrees that the distribution of people entitled to asylum between EU countries (“relocation”) is currently “unthinkable”. He described the EU’s commitment on asylum as an “important step in the right direction, especially the accelerated procedures planned at the EU’s external borders.” At police level, a more intense exchange of ideas was agreed in the future, in order to “put an end to the big guys behind this” in the area of smuggling crime.
For host Vít Rakušan, Czech Interior Minister, it was “one of the most important meetings because migration is a challenge for everyone. We are all in Central Europe and we can only face the challenge together”, he said at the joint press conference. Border controls are currently required in the Schengen area. But the “real challenge” is the EU’s external border.
According to the Ministry of the Interior, the number of refugee detentions in the Balkans increased slightly compared to last year and amounted to 365 thousand people between January 1 and November 12. Last year there were 400 thousand. Syrians and Afghans are often caught. Depending on the country and situation, they may request asylum or be “repatriated”.
Around 50 Austrian police officers have been stationed in Szeged since 2020. They are primarily responsible for “internal controls”, as the Ministry of the Interior put it. Hungary also receives support in border surveillance with the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Turkey. In Hungary, just before the border with Austria, 38 Austrian police officers have been working since last December as part of the so-called Operation Fox.
“Our job is to look for smugglers,” the commander of the Austrian contingent in Szeged, Michael Muhr, told journalists in the Hungarian border city on Monday. The Austrians are not active on the “first line”, that is, directly on the fence, but on the “second line”, which extends 30 to 50 kilometers from the border to the interior of the country. Hungary built a 150-kilometer border fence with Serbia in 2015.
Muhr continued that an Austrian police officer traveled with up to two colleagues from Hungary, in an all-terrain vehicle or on foot. The equipment included thermal cameras, heartbeat detectors and even a dog. The Hungarian emergency services had a radio with which units could communicate with each other or notify the operations center: “The gas station attendant calls there often,” Muhr said, and reports unusual people. “The people who are being dragged are not aggressive, they have no strength left, they have gone over the fence,” said Muhr. “Hungarians perform official acts.” The Hungarian colleague was communicating on the radio, said deputy commander Philipp Laschober. “We are not allowed to transport dragged people.”
It is known that Hungary “almost does not accept asylum applications”, said Green Party foreign policy spokeswoman Ewa Ernst-Dziedzic on the occasion of the APA interior ministers meeting. Minister Karner’s visit to Visegrád was “probably held at the same fence where Hungarian ‘border guards’ are using resistance against refugees”. According to Ernst-Dziedzic, it is not asylum seekers who are illegal, but rather those who resist. Petar Rosandić, president of the NGO SOS Balkanroute, added to APA that the border between Hungary and Serbia is a “lawless area in which refugees are victims of right-wing populist policies and criminal smuggling clans at the same time.”
Minister Karner had already rejected allegations that Austria was indirectly involved in the so-called resistance in Hungary in the summer. So-called pushbacks violate applicable legislation such as the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights and the Convention on Human Rights, according to which people have the right to apply for asylum, which is then examined.
Migration expert Judith Kohlenberger highlighted to APA that the only legal route for refugees to Austria is family reunification. To do this, a member of the nuclear family must already be in Austria. Across the EU, only a few European countries maintain resettlement programs, i.e. safe escape routes directly from countries of origin. “And if so, usually only in small contingents.” There is no humanitarian admission program in Austria as of 2017.