Austria is opposing the German government’s recently unveiled plans to reinstate passport controls at all German borders in a bid to drastically reduce the number of people entering the country without a visa.
“Austria will not accept any persons who are being sent back from Germany. There is no room for manoeuvre,” Austrian Interior Minister Gerhard Karner told the Bild and Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung newspapers on Monday.
Karner argued that Germany has the right to send people back if another EU country is responsible for their asylum application. However, this requires a formal procedure and the consent of the member state concerned.
He said that refusals at internal EU borders were not allowed, just three weeks before Austria’s parliamentary elections.
All of Germany’s neighbouring countries, including Austria, are members of the Schengen Area. Normally, this would mean that travel within the area would be unhindered without restrictions.
Earlier on Monday, German government sources told dpa that the border controls will begin on September 16 and are expected to last for six months.
According to sources, the border controls are aimed at curbing illegal migration and tackling threats from Islamic terrorist groups and cross-border criminal organizations.
There has long been debate about how to deal with migrants seeking asylum in Germany. The debate has intensified in recent weeks following the deadly knife attack earlier this month in the western German city of Solingen.
The suspected attacker, a Syrian national, had evaded an order to be deported from Germany to Bulgaria, having originally entered the EU via Bulgaria.
Currently, asylum seekers are only rejected at the German borders in a limited number of cases. For example, if someone is denied entry to the country or decides not to apply for asylum.
