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EUROPEAN UNION

Austria’s Kurz wants renegotiation of EU’s Lisbon treaty

Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz called on Friday for the renegotiation of the European Union's Lisbon Treaty and tough action on countries letting migrants transit ahead of key EU elections this month.

Published: 4 May 2019 11:35 CEST
Austria's Kurz wants renegotiation of EU's Lisbon treaty
Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz said he believed the Lisbon Treaty is now out of date. Photo: Hans Klaus Techt/APA/AFP
Kurz's centre-right People's Party (OeVP) is stepping up its campaign for the European Parliament elections and he gave a pool interview to several Austrian newspapers. 
 
“A new treaty is needed with clearer sanctions for members who run up debts, punishments for countries that wave through illegal migrants without registering them, as well as tough consequences for breaches of the rule of law and liberal democracy,” Kurz said.
   
He said that “much had changed” since the 2007 Lisbon Treaty, pointing to the eurozone and migration crises and Brexit.
 
 
A treaty renegotiation would require unanimous consent from all EU member states. In the same interview, Kurz expressed scepticism over any cooperation between the centre-right European People's Party (EPP) — to which the OeVP belongs — and parties further to the right in the European Parliament.
   
“We don't want to hand over the EU to the extreme fringes on the left or right, we need instead a strong politics of the centre,” he said.
   
At home the OeVP has been in coalition with the far-right Freedom Party (FPOe) since elections in late 2017 but in recent weeks Kurz has come under increasing pressure to condemn the actions of some FPOe members.
   
Kurz also said he was in favour of ending the practice of MEPs shuttling between Strasbourg and Brussels and called for the European Parliament to be permanently based in the Belgian capital.
   
France has always opposed giving up its European Parliament site in Strasbourg but referring to French President Emmanuel Macron and his own reform programme for Europe, Kurz said: “He who demands reforms must also be 
prepared to make them where it hurts.”
   
The Austrian chancellor wants to reduce the size of the European Commission and ending the practice whereby each member state automatically receives a commissioner.
 
The posts should be apportioned on a rotating basis, he said, adding that currently “there are more commissioners than areas of responsibility”.
 
While supporting a renewed focus for the EU on security and foreign policy, Kurz said he was against the prospect of relinquishing command responsibilities to a common European army.
   
As for the next European Commission which will be appointed later this year, Kurz said “a generational change at the top” was needed, “with a new policy direction”.

EUROPEAN UNION

Austria joins countries calling for asylum centres outside EU

Austria is one of 15 EU member states who have sent a joint letter to the European Commission demanding a further tightening of the bloc's asylum policy, which will make it easier to transfer undocumented migrants to third countries, such as Rwanda, including when they are rescued at sea.

Published: 16 May 2024 16:08 CEST
Updated: 17 May 2024 17:23 CEST
Austria joins countries calling for asylum centres outside EU

The letter, sent to the European Commission on Thursday, comes less than a month before European Parliament elections, in which far-right anti-immigration parties are forecast to make gains.

The letter asks the European Union’s executive arm to “propose new ways and solutions to prevent irregular migration to Europe”.

The group includes Italy and Greece, which receive a substantial number of the people making the perilous journey across the Mediterranean Sea to reach the EU — many seeking to escape poverty, war or persecution, according to the International Organization for Migration.

They want the EU to toughen up its recently adopted asylum pact, which introduces tighter controls on those seeking to enter the 27-nation bloc.
That reform includes speedier vetting of people arriving without documents, new border detention centres and faster deportation for rejected asylum applicants.

The 15 proposed in their letter the introduction of “mechanisms… aimed at detecting, intercepting — or in cases of distress, rescuing — migrants on the high seas and bringing them to a predetermined place of safety in a partner country outside the EU, where durable solutions for those migrants could be found”.

They said it should be easier to send asylum seekers to third countries while their requests for protection are assessed.

They cited the example of a controversial deal that Italy has struck with non-EU Albania, under which Rome can send thousands of asylum seekers plucked from Italian waters to holding camps in the Balkan country until their cases are processed.

The concept in EU asylum law of what constitutes “safe third countries” should be reassessed, they continued.

Safe country debate

EU law stipulates that people arriving in the bloc without documents can be sent to a third country, where they could have requested asylum — so long as that country is deemed safe and the applicant has a genuine link with it.

That would exclude schemes like the divisive law passed by the UK, which has now left the EU, enabling London to refuse all irregular arrivals the right to request asylum and send them to Rwanda.

Rights groups accuse the African country — ruled with an iron fist by President Paul Kagame since the end of the 1994 genocide that killed around 800,000 people — of cracking down on free speech and political opposition.

The 15 nations said they wanted the EU to make deals with third countries along the main migration routes, citing the example of the arrangement it made with Turkey in 2016 to take in Syrian refugees from the war in their home country.

The letter was signed by Austria, Bulgaria, Cyprus, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, Estonia, Greece, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, the Netherlands, Poland and Romania.

It was not signed by Hungary, whose Prime Minister Viktor Orban has resisted EU plans to share out responsibility across the bloc for hosting asylum seekers, or to contribute to the costs of that plan.

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