12/18/2023 6:08 pm (current 12/18/2023 6:10 pm)
Burgenland gets a second office to combat smugglers ©APA/THEMENBILD
“Operation Fox”, in which Austrian police officers in Hungary combat smuggling in cooperation with local authorities, is being expanded. The number of employees will increase from 40 to 60 and a second office will be set up in Heiligenkreuz in southern Burgenland, Interior Minister Gerhard Karner (ÖVP) said in Eisenstadt on Monday. He and Defense Minister Klaudia Tanner (ÖVP) thanked the emergency services at the Burgenland border.
The new office, in addition to the existing one in Lanzenkirchen (Wiener Neustadt-Land district) in Lower Austria, is scheduled to open in the first half of 2024. This year, the operation, together with numerous other border protection measures, has brought successes, Karner emphasized. This is demonstrated by the number of refugee arrests in November: although 84 people were detained in Burgenland last month, there were almost 9,000 as of November 2022, according to the Minister of the Interior.
Around 660 smugglers have been arrested across Austria so far in 2023. In Burgenland there were 282. “We have managed to massively disrupt the smugglers' business,” said Karner.
This year, 450 soldiers were deployed to the Burgenland border as part of the relief mission, which Tanner said contributed around 210,000 man-days. “The safety of the population is and continues to be the main priority”, stated the Minister of Defense.
The SPÖ Burgenland also thanked the police and soldiers for their efforts. “Any measure that improves the situation of the population in Burgenland will be welcome,” emphasized club president Roland Fürst to APA. Furthermore, the SPÖ continues to demand an action plan against human trafficking from the Minister of the Interior, he noted.