Angry backlash to new asylum law

The leader of Austria’s right-wing Freedom Party (FPÖ), Heinz-Christian Strache, has reacted angrily to the news that the coalition government has reached agreement with the Greens on new legislation that would make communities across the country obliged to take in asylum seekers.

Published: 18 August 2015 15:25 CEST

The new legislation is partly designed to ease the situation at Traiskirchen. Photo: ORF

The SPÖ and the ÖVP have been struggling to respond to the number of asylum requests, which rose above 28,300 between January and June alone – as many as for the whole of 2014. Officials expect the total to reach 80,000 this year.

The federal government has struggled to provide accommodation for people as many local authorities have refused to accept any refugees.

The draft law means communities who haven’t yet taken in any asylum seekers will now be obliged to – with the quota set to up to 1.5 percent of the local population.

The coalition had needed the support of the Greens as the legislation requires a change to the constitution, and therefore needs a two thirds majority in parliament.

Heinz Christian-Strache voiced his anger at the quotas on Tuesday, saying that they have been imposed on the Austrian people in an undemocratic manner. “It’s monstrous to try and simply push this law which is hostile to the population through parliament,” he said. He is now calling for a petition (Volksbegehren) to be held on the matter.

The draft law still needs to be passed by parliament but is expected to come into force in October.

Human rights lawyer Georg Bürstmayr told the ORF that the legislation is necessary as the federal government is made responsible for human rights issues by European law and “it is not up to the provinces to make decisions about human rights in a democracy”.

Amnesty International recently called conditions at Austria's main refugee camp a “disgraceful” violation of human rights. The Traiskirchen camp, 20 kilometres south of Vienna, has had to stop accepting new arrivals because of disastrous sanitary conditions and hopeless overcrowding.

Built to house 1,800 people, the camp and an adjacent government building are currently home to 4,000 men, women and children.

With the German far right coming out on top in two state elections earlier this month, the socialist-led national Berlin government has reimposed border controls on Western frontiers that are supposed to see freedom of movement in the European Union’s Schengen zone.

The Netherlands government, which includes the party of Dutch far-right leader Geert Wilders, announced on Wednesday that it had requested from Brussels an opt-out from EU rules on asylum, with Prime Minister Dick Schoof declaring that there was an asylum “crisis”.

Meanwhile, new British Prime Minister Keir Starmer of the left-wing Labour Party paid a visit to Rome for talks with Italian counterpart Georgia Meloni, whose party has neo-fascist roots, to discuss the strategies used by Italy in seeking to reduce migration.

Far-right parties performed strongly in June European elections, coming out on top in France, prompting President Emmanuel Macron to call snap elections which resulted in right-winger Michel Barnier, who has previously called for a moratorium on migration, being named prime minister.

We are witnessing the “continuation of a rightward shift in migration policies in the European Union,” said Jerome Vignon, migration advisor at the Jacques Delors Institute think-tank.

It reflected the rise of far-right parties in the European elections in June, and more recently in the two regional elections in Germany, he said, referring to a “quite clearly protectionist and conservative trend”.

Strong message

“Anti-immigration positions that were previously the preserve of the extreme right are now contaminating centre-right parties, even centre-left parties like the Social Democrats” in Germany, added Florian Trauner, a migration specialist at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel, the Dutch-speaking university in Brussels.

While the Labour government in London has ditched its right-wing Conservative predecessor administration’s plan to send asylum seekers to Rwanda, there is clearly interest in a deal Italy has struck with Albania to detain and process migrants there.

Within the European Union, Cyprus has suspended the processing of asylum applications from Syrian applicants, while laws have appeared authorising pushbacks at the border in Finland and Lithuania.

Under the pretext of dealing with “emergency” or “crisis” situations, the list of exemptions and deviations from the common rules defined by the European Union continues to grow.

All this flies in the face of the new EU migration pact, agreed only in May and coming into force in 2026.

In the wake of deadly attacks in Mannheim and most recently Solingen blamed on radical Islamists, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s government also expelled 28 Afghans back to their home country for the first time since the Taliban takeover of Kabul.

Such gestures from Germany are all the more symbolic given how the country since World War II has tried to turn itself into a model of integration, taking in a million refugees, mainly Syrians in 2015-2016 and then more than a million Ukrainian exiles since the Russian invasion.

Germany is sending a “strong message” to its own public as well as to its European partners, said Trauner.

The migratory pressure “remains significant” with more than 500,000 asylum applications registered in the European Union for the first six months of the year, he said.

‘Climate on impunity’

Germany, which received about a quarter of them alone, criticises the countries of southern Europe for allowing migrants to circulate without processing their asylum applications, but southern states denounce a lack of solidarity of the rest of Europe.

The moves by Germany were condemned by EU allies including Greece and Poland, but Scholz received the perhaps unwelcome accolade of praise from Hungarian right-wing Prime Minister Viktor Orban, Moscow’s closest friend in the European Union, when he declared “welcome to the club”.

The EU Commission’s failure to hold countries to account “only fosters a climate of impunity where unilateral migration policies and practices can proliferate,” said Adriana Tidona, Amnesty International’s Migration Researcher.

But behind the rhetoric, all European states are also aware of the crucial role played by migrants in keeping sectors going including transport and healthcare, as well as the importance of attracting skilled labour.

“Behind the symbolic speeches, European leaders, particularly German ones, remain pragmatic: border controls are targeted,” said Sophie Meiners, a migration researcher with the German Council on Foreign Relations.

Even Meloni’s government has allowed the entry into Italy of 452,000 foreign workers for the period 2023-2025.

“In parallel to this kind of new restrictive measures, they know they need to address skilled labour needs,” she said.