Austria considers tougher border controls to stop migrant flow

Austria considers tougher border controls to stop migrant flow
By Euronews
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Freezing temperatures and still they come….Around 850 refugees battled snowfalls on Monday as they trudged through Serbia heading towards northern

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Freezing temperatures and still they come….Around 850 refugees battled snowfalls on Monday as they trudged through Serbia heading towards northern Europe.

#refugees: a woman with her child in a snow covered field at Macedonia-Serbia border. Too many are still in the cold pic.twitter.com/c5LGtGHCHz

— Valerio De Cesaris (@ValerioDeC) January 18, 2016

In response, Austria has become the latest EU country to consider tightening border controls.

As EU foreign ministers gathered in Brussels for their first meeting of 2016, Austria’s Minister Sebastian Kurz said things have to change.

“Neither the policy of inviting nor of welcoming is the right answer to the migration crisis. So we need a different answer, and that different answer can only be to stop the migrants of course ideally at the EU’s exterior borders but if that doesn’t work than at national borders.”

Over the last few weeks, fearful of becoming a bottleneck, various EU countries have denied entry to migrants after Germany began returning some without valid papers back over its border.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel who has been criticised by her own party for her open door refugee policy has again defended herself.
To deal with the influx she too wants EU external borders to be made more secure. It was an issue during talks with Greece’s president , Greece being one of the main gateways to Europe for migrants crossing the Aegean. Merkel is also seeking a deal to resettle asylum seekers across the European Union, thus avoiding a breakdown of free travel and commerce within the bloc.

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