Austria exerts pressure within the European Union
Chancellor Karl Nehammer
Austrian Chancellor Karl Nehammer said in an interview with the German daily Die Welt that he is prepared to block the final declaration of this week’s European Union summit if European leaders do not reach concrete agreements to combat illegal migration. Empty words are not enough; a “clear and unequivocal commitment” is needed to strengthen the protection of the EU’s external border and the use of European funds for this purpose, the Austrian chancellor emphasized in the interview published on Wednesday. Nehammer previously requested the allocation of two billion euros from European funds for the expansion of the border fence between Bulgaria and Turkey. Austria and 11 other EU member states, namely Bulgaria, Cyprus, Denmark, Estonia, Greece, Hungary, Lithuania, Latvia, Poland, the Czech Republic, and Slovakia, asked the European Commission in October 2021 to finance the construction of physical barriers at the borders to combat illegal migration.
But the European Commission and other EU member states, including Germany, reject this idea. Ahead of the summit that starts on Thursday, eight EU member states (Austria, Denmark, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Greece, Malta, and Slovakia) have sent a letter to the President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, and the President of the European Council, Charles Michel, asking them for stronger measures against clandestine migration, in particular the addition of EU funds to measures to protect the Union’s external borders, the acceleration of returns, and new agreements in matters with third countries. According to the signatory countries of this letter, the current EU asylum system is ineffective, and traffickers especially benefit from it. Dissensions also existed in December last year, when Austria voted against the admission of Romania and Bulgaria to the Schengen area. The Romanian MEPs then declared that Austria was exerting economic pressure on their country and that the politicians from Vienna used this topic for electoral purposes.
By Paul Bumman
