Yesterday the Austrian government said it planned to build a fence along its border with Slovenia, from where tens of thousands of migrants have flowed in over the past weeks, media report also featuring various comments on the subject – which is obviously widely debated in Austria. After Hungary, Austria is the second EU member state to erect a physical barrier on its border, Les Echos notes, while the WJSE and Le Figaro highlight that this is the first anti-migrant border fence to be constructed within the European document-free travel area.
For Les Echos – and others – there is a growing risk of domino effect as Slovenia said it already has a similar plan in the pipeline. In an interview with FAZ, Austria’s Interior Minister Johanna Mikl-Leitner asserts that Austria does not want to seal itself off – the country rather seeks to master the “chaotic situation” at its border and coordinate with Slovenia and the European Commission, including EC President Jean-Claude Juncker and European Commissioner for Migration Dimitris Avramopoulos, who have been notified about Austria’s plan of action.
The EC, Slovenian media report, has not taken a position regarding Austria’s plans yet, even though, according to several European sources, EC President Jean-Claude Juncker and Austrian Chancellor Werner Faymann agreed in a telephone conversation that fences have no place in Europe. The Austrian plans, the FT reports, have caused a dispute between Austria and Germany. Berlin has accused Austrian authorities of helping groups of refugees get through the German border under the cover of night, sources such as Les Echos, FAZ, Der Standard, El Pais and Magyar Nemzet report, with German Minister of Interior Thomas de Maiziere saying that Austria transports refugees to the German border after dark to help them cross undetected – a statement deemed appropriate by FAZ.
The affair, the FT reports, highlights Europe’s fraught response to the crisis. “Three days after struggling to draw up an emergency plan to improve cooperation in the face of refugee influx, EU member states are trampling on their commitments and tearing apart again,” Les Echos comments. There are concerns, in the media, about the increasing breaches of European law.
For Jacques Schuster in Die Welt, this trend undermines the rule of law which has been a mainstay of Western prosperity and, for him; even the idea of constitutional democracies is under threat. The fences Vienna wants to erect send Europe back to its very beginning, Le Soir‘s Pascal Martin comments. European Council President Donald Tusk and Italian Minister of Foreign Affairs Paolo Gentiloni also warn that the Schengen agreement is at risk of collapsing, Jyllands-Posten reports.
As to EU High Representative and EC Vice-President Federica Mogherini, who warns in an interview with Il Sole 24 Ore, that – without common rules on immigration – Europe faces a “risk of disintegration.” Oliver Pink however stresses, in an editorial in Die Presse, that the EU does on a larger scale what Austria does on a small scale: it shifts the problem to the external borders of the EU and pays Turkey to keep refugees in the country as long as possible.
