The Austria’s Defence Minister, Hans Doskozil, on Friday, urged the European Union to curb immigration by banning refugee applications on its territory and set up asylum application centres outside the bloc.
“This would save lives and curb organised crime through smuggling,’’ Doskozil said.
At the new centres, EU officials would quickly decide whether asylum seekers are in need of protection.
The paper proposed Niger as a potential location, without naming other countries.
Migrants who pass this hurdle would be directly transferred to EU destination countries.
The paper indirectly advocates an EU-wide cap for asylum seekers, by stating that “every country has capacity limits, beyond which integration is impossible.’’
However, a coordinated EU refugee policy has so far failed to materialise as some of the bloc’s members, especially in the east, have refused to take in significant numbers of refugees.
The proposal comes as data released by EU border agency Frontex showed that far fewer migrants arrived in Europe last year than in 2015.
The number fell by nearly two-thirds to 364,000, as a drop in arrivals to Greece outweighed record migration to Italy, according to the data, which was released on Friday.
Despite the drop, an estimated 123,000 migrants still managed to travel the so-called Balkan route from Greece to Western Europe last year, according to Frontex, despite steps by Austria and Balkan countries to stop the flow of people. (dpa/NAN)
