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Austria Weighs Building Border Fence to Stem Flow of Migrants Austria and Slovenia Trade Threats as Tensions Over Migrants Grow
(about 5 hours later)
BERLIN — Austria is considering building a fence along its border with Slovenia to help control the influx of migrants heading north through Europe, the country’s interior minister said on Wednesday, but she emphasized that the structure was intended to establish order rather than to close the border. BERLIN — The fragile alliance that has kept the surge of migrants moving through the Balkans and toward Germany showed more signs of unraveling on Wednesday, while within Germany pressure grew to stem the flow into its overburdened southern state of Bavaria.
The move came against the backdrop of rising tensions among members of the European Union struggling to cope with the flow of migrants and refugees through the Balkans and toward Germany, Sweden and other countries, which is straining the resources of even the wealthiest nations. Austria, which has been a steady partner to Germany in filtering and moving asylum seekers from the Middle East and elsewhere along the route, announced that it would impose border controls by building a fence along its border with Slovenia.
Johanna Mikl-Leitner, the Austrian interior minister, said she had ordered her office to begin exploring possibilities for a “solid, technical barrier several kilometers long.” Slovenia responded by repeating its threat to build its own fence on at least part of its frontier with Croatia.
Pressed about the issue on Austrian public television on Wednesday, she said, “Of course it is about a fence.” Such a move by Slovenia, which has become a crucial country along the so-called Western Balkans trail, could put migrants in peril, backing them up at borders along the route just as the weather is about to turn cold.
Hungary completed a 108-mile razor-wire fence along its border with Serbia last month, after squalid encampments sprouted across the region over the summer. European Union leaders denounced the move as contrary to the principles on which the bloc was founded, and they said it was reminiscent of the decades the Continent was divided between the communist East and the democratic West. At the same time, local leaders in Germany are complaining that they are overwhelmed and can barely handle the asylum seekers they already have, never mind the tens of thousands more who are on their way.
With as many as 8,000 migrants entering Austria each day, the southern crossing at Spielfeld, across the border with Slovenia, has been overwhelmed by the crush. Some migrants have been left no option but to sleep in an outdoor parking lot because of a lack of transportation and housing. Conservatives are growing increasingly restive, and the Christian Democratic Union, the political party of Chancellor Angela Merkel, has slipped five percentage points in opinion polls.
“It is a question of what the fence is for,” said Karl-Heinz Grundböck, a spokesman for the Austrian Interior Ministry. “It is not about generally closing off the border, but we are trying to control the situation and ensuring the security with large numbers of people. We want to avoid escalation.” Horst Seehofer, head of the Bavaria-only Christian Social Union party, has demanded that the chancellor reduce the influx of migrants, setting a deadline on Sunday when Ms. Merkel and the third leader of their governing coalition, Sigmar Gabriel, head of the center-left Social Democrats, have a meeting scheduled.
The authorities in Slovenia said they were watching the developments, and Prime Minister Miro Cerar warned that his country was ready to “deploy various obstacles” of its own, along Slovenia’s border with Croatia, if necessary. “We need swift, immediate measures,” Mr. Seehofer said in Munich, after addressing legislators in Bavaria. “Above all, it is necessary to re-establish a situation in keeping with the rule of the law.”
“Slovenia does not want to see walls erected between European states,” Mr. Cerar said on Wednesday after a National Security Council meeting in Ljubljana, the capital, on the migrant crisis. The developments highlighted the growing consequences of the European Union’s failure to forge a common solution to the problem of hundreds of thousands of people from Syria, Afghanistan and other strife-ridden countries who have been trekking through the continent on their way to seek new, safe lives in the heart of Europe.
But if “forced,” he said, Slovenia will act along its border “to significantly curb the flow of migrants and help direct them to designated crossing points, and manage the influx more efficiently.” Despite plans by European Union leaders to build reception centers around the outer rim of the bloc to control the flow north and west, no progress has been made, and an amended plan that emerged last weekend in Brussels appears doomed. The result has been that nations along the trail have had to fend for themselves, working unofficially together to allow the migrants to freely cross borders — as long as they also exited at the other end — on their way to Germany.
Slovenia’s border with Croatia forms the southern frontier of the 26-nation Schengen area allowing visa-free travel. Germany has opened its arms to the new arrivals and has said it expects as many as a million to try to settle there this year.
Slovenia complained bitterly in the past week that Croatia had taken migrants to its border with Slovenia and left thousands of them in a field and on a riverbank, telling them to make their own way to Slovenia, rather than coordinating the movement of large groups of people with its neighbor. But Mr. Seehofer told Bavarian lawmakers that if an agreement could not be reached with Ms. Merkel this weekend to limit the newcomers, he would examine “judicial and political measures,” although he did not name any specific threats.
Many of the migrants entering Austria are intent on continuing their journey north to Germany. On Wednesday, the German interior minister, Thomas de Maizière, harshly criticized Austria, accusing it of essentially waving refugees into Germany and even of bringing groups unannounced at night to the border with Bavaria. Bavaria has borne the brunt of handling the tens of thousands of arrivals — 15,000 people alone over the past weekend — since the first trains began arriving in Munich this summer. There, with the help of volunteers, refugees begin the first steps of the asylum process and are then dispersed throughout Germany.
Mr. de Maizière said that “intensive contacts” with the government in Vienna had yielded promises that the situation would be brought under control. “I expect that to happen immediately,” he added. The days of cheering welcomes, however, have given way to a palpable discontent, and Mr. Seehofer said many constituents had questioned whether the government has the situation under control.
Commentators have noted increasing rancor in exchanges between Germany and Austria, which have been close allies for decades, and say it illustrates how severely the refugee crisis could test even the strongest of ties. Although Mr. Seehofer has repeatedly said he will not allow the coalition government to collapse, he refused to comment on a report in the newspaper Bild on Wednesday that, as a last resort, he was considering pulling the three ministers from his party out of their posts in Ms. Merkel’s cabinet in Berlin.
Federal police officers in the Bavarian town of Passau said 5,500 refugees had arrived from Austria overnight. The chancellor, who departed Wednesday for a three-day trip to China, has refused to be drawn into a debate over what some observers view as saber-rattling from traditionally independent-minded Bavaria. Her spokesman said Ms. Merkel viewed the talks on Sunday as a way to maintain the dialogue among the three leaders of the coalition.
The chancellor has insisted that talks to solve the problem were continuing. “There is an agenda that we need to work off of,” Ms. Merkel told reporters in Berlin on Tuesday.
While she insisted that Berlin and Vienna were cooperating with each other, the tensions between Germany and Austria worsened on Wednesday, with each side accusing the other of failing to maintain order and a manageable flow at certain border crossings.
Germany’s interior minister, Thomas de Maizière, issued a rare and blistering attack on Austria, saying it “was out of order” for busing refugees to the border with Bavaria, unannounced and under cover of darkness. For their part, the Austrians accuse the Germans of being too slow to admit arrivals.
The government in Vienna had promised after “‘intensive consultations” to improve, Mr. de Maizière said, adding, “I expect that to happen immediately.”
At the same time, he raised the specter of distinguishing among asylum seekers, saying that Afghans, who are arriving in the second-highest numbers, behind Syrians, were likely to be sent home.
“People who come to us as refugees from Afghanistan cannot all expect to be able to stay in Germany,” he said, noting that German troops, police and development aid continue to pour into Afghanistan and that not all areas there are unsafe. (The likelihood of harm if a person is returned to his or her native country is a condition for granting asylum.)
In announcing Austria’s move late Tuesday, Johanna Mikl-Leitner, the interior minister, said she had ordered her office to begin exploring possibilities for a “solid, technical barrier several kilometers long.”
Pressed about the issue on Austrian public television on Wednesday, she said, “Of course it is about a fence.” But her office insisted that the proposed barrier would not close off the border, but serve to control the situation to ensure security.
Nevertheless, the decision appeared to immediately escalate international tensions and could result in more restrictive borders in Slovenia, where the prime minister, Miro Cerar, said his country was closely watching Austria’s moves and was ready to set up its own border obstacles.
“Slovenia does not want to see walls erected between European states,” Mr. Cerar said, “but if it will be forced into it, it is prepared to deploy various obstacles along its border with Croatia to significantly curb the flow of migrants and help direct them to designated crossing points and manage the influx more efficiently.”
That could back up the flow into Croatia. Slovenia’s border with Croatia, which also forms the southern frontier of the Schengen passport-free travel zone in Europe, is 472 miles long. Slovenia has complained that Croatia is not coordinating the movement of large groups of migrants across designated crossings but instead dumping thousands at a field or on a riverbank at the border and telling them to find their own way into Slovenia.
The last stop for migrants before they enter Germany, where most prefer to settle, is Austria. Austria has had as many as 8,000 entering the southern crossing at Spielfeld, across the border with Slovenia, each day and has been overwhelmed by the crush. Some have been left no option but to sleep in an outdoor parking lot because of a lack of transportation and housing.
Within Germany, the pressure is being keenly felt in the region along the Austrian border. German federal police officers in the Bavarian town of Passau said 5,500 refugees had arrived from Austria overnight.
“We were full up to the roofs,” said Frank Koller, a regional police spokesman.“We were full up to the roofs,” said Frank Koller, a regional police spokesman.
In recent days, he said, migrants have been arriving at the border by bus, usually starting at noon and continuing for 10 hours. The authorities scramble to evacuate shelters, Mr. Koller added, putting refugees on special trains and buses for dispersal across Germany so that the makeshift accommodations are ready for the next arrivals.In recent days, he said, migrants have been arriving at the border by bus, usually starting at noon and continuing for 10 hours. The authorities scramble to evacuate shelters, Mr. Koller added, putting refugees on special trains and buses for dispersal across Germany so that the makeshift accommodations are ready for the next arrivals.
Mr. Koller added that nighttime temperatures had fallen to 35 degrees Fahrenheit, or 2 degrees Celsius, and that the main concern was “that people do not spend more time out in the open than is necessary.”Mr. Koller added that nighttime temperatures had fallen to 35 degrees Fahrenheit, or 2 degrees Celsius, and that the main concern was “that people do not spend more time out in the open than is necessary.”
In contrast with Bavarian officials, who have complained about Austria’s policy on migrants, Mr. Koller said the police in Passau had a good working relationship with their Austrian counterparts. Melissa Eddy and Alison Smale reported from Berlin, and Barbara Surk from Spielfeld, Austria.
But the overall strain on the region was clear in an unusually harsh commentary from the liberal German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung, which is published in Bavaria.
“The chaotic conditions at the border must be ended as soon as possible,” the newspaper wrote on Wednesday, “if only because they are undermining the trust of citizens in their state.”
Speaking in Vienna, Mr. Grundböck said that migrants were growing increasingly weary of waiting to cross into Germany through official channels. After making their way on foot through several European countries, many have taken matters into their own hands, crossing into Germany without waiting to be processed by the authorities in Bavaria, he said.
The situation on Austria’s southern border with Slovenia has become similarly tense over recent days, with hundreds waiting in the open to get into Austria.
Slovenia, which has asked other European Union states to provide 400 extra police officers, has received only a meager response.
Hundreds of refugees spent the night outside in Spielfeld, on the Austrian side of the border with Slovenia. Some sent their families back to Slovenia to try to find a bed in heated tents.
There are not enough public transportation links to take refugees through Austria, so many new arrivals are hiring taxis, meaning that there is an unregistered flow of migrants into the country, and possibly continuing into Germany.