Chancellor Karl Nehammer wants to see a fence similar to the one between the US and Mexico on the EU’s eastern border. At least the German newspaper “Bild” (Saturday edition) quotes him accordingly: “We need effective barriers”, demands the chancellor. “They have to be very tall, they have to go very deep into the ground and they have to be constantly monitored – technically and in terms of personnel.” Only with this “triad” can illegal migration be contained.
“The head of our Federal Police is there right now”, adds Nehammer in the “image”. “He looks at the US-Mexico border to see what measures are working. Our aim is to share this knowledge with other EU countries such as Bulgaria in order to improve our protection at EU borders.”
Against immigration to “the best social systems”
Regarding the upcoming summit, Nehammer said the migration development was “definitely dramatic. And there are still an incredible number of migrants waiting on the routes. In Iran alone there are three million Afghans who want to go to Europe. Added to this is the situation in the earthquake area of Turkey and northern Syria, where more than a million refugees from Syria live and have now lost everything again.”
Asylum procedures, according to the chancellor, will continue to exist. “The EU stands for respect for human rights. But, finally, one must avoid crossing several safe countries and then requesting asylum in countries with better social systems.
Criticisms of the SPÖ and the FPÖ
The SPÖ, for its part, criticized Nehammer’s statements as “symbolic politics”. “Solution-oriented policy has been completely canceled in the ÖVP,” SPÖ security spokesman Reinhold Einwallner said in a broadcast. “The ÖVP is not about solutions, just buzzwords and headlines.” A new European asylum system is needed. “In the EU, concrete solutions have been under discussion for years, which are not being implemented, among other things, due to the blocking attitude of the ÖVP. If Nehammer takes Trump as a model, everything is said.”
The FPÖ called for stricter measures at the Austrian borders. Nehammer should end the “deportation of responsibility to the EU” and follow Hungary’s example, the president of the federal FPÖ party, Herbert Kickl, explained in a broadcast. It needs “a ‘Fortress Austria’ and an asylum stop”.