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Austria, Poland, Czechs start Slovak border checks to curb migration

Austria, Poland, and the Czech Republic said Tuesday they were introducing checks on borders with Slovakia to curb illegal migration, but Bratislava called for a "European solution".

Austria, Poland, Czechs start Slovak border checks to curb migration
A sign reading 'control' ('Kontrolle') stands on the road at the German-Austrian border near Lindau, southern Germany. (Photo by STEFAN PUCHNER / DPA / AFP)

“Starting midnight, we are reintroducing border controls at the border with Slovakia,” Poland’s Interior Minister Mariusz Kaminski told reporters.

Working “in coordination with neighbours”, Prague will follow suit, said the Czech interior ministry.

Later Tuesday, Austria’s interior ministry also announced it would reintroduce checks at its eleven border posts with Slovakia before smugglers could “change their routes”.

In all three countries, the checks are expected to last ten days initially.

“The number of illegal migrants into the EU is beginning to grow again. We are not taking this lightly,” Czech Prime Minister Petr Fiala said on X, formerly Twitter.

Slovakia has recently seen an uptick in migrants coming largely from Serbia via Hungary.

‘Cascading effect’ 

Following the moves by Warsaw and Prague, outgoing Slovak Prime Minister Ludovit Odor said “migration needs a European solution at the external borders.”

“Once a country boosts the protection of its own border, it creates a cascading effect, we will all pay money for it, and the result will be very unclear,” Odor said in a statement. He added Slovakia would respond to its neighbours’ move on Wednesday.

In the first eight months of this year, Slovakia detected approximately 24,500 migrants who had entered illegally. That was up from nearly 10,900 for all of last year and only hundreds per year before that, according to Slovak police. The force’s chief, Stefan Hamran, said the vast majority identified themselves as Syrians, who cannot be detained or deported under international rules, and that they continued on to Western Europe.

Robert Fico, whose Smer-SD party won the Slovak election on Saturday, vowed to introduce immediate checks on the Hungarian border if he becomes prime minister, as expected.

“We will need to use force to resolve the problem with migrants,” he said.

The Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia form the so-called Visegrad-four (V4) group of ex-communist Central European EU and NATO members. When the migrant wave hit Europe in 2015, the V4 stood up against migrant redistribution quotas proposed by the EU, earning scorn across the bloc.

Germany said last week it would step up policing of its borders with Poland and the Czech Republic in a bid to get a grip on rising levels of illegal migration. German Interior Ministry Nancy Faeser recently raised the possibility of fixed controls on Polish and Czech borders, a measure already in place along the boundary between Germany and Austria.

All of the said countries are members of the European Union and of Europe’s Schengen open-borders zone. The reintroduction of border checks in the Schengen Area is permitted only in exceptional circumstances and must be notified to Brussels before it can be implemented. Warsaw said it had already notified the European Commission, the EU’s executive arm, about the decision.

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POLITICS

How Austria’s centre-left SPÖ party plans to change integration policy

Asylum, migration, and integration policies are a much-debated issue in Austria, particularly as the country heads to its national elections in the fall. What are the centre-left SPÖ plans?

How Austria's centre-left SPÖ party plans to change integration policy

National elections in Austria will take place this fall, and one of the most debated issues – certainly one that has been driving voters for the past few years – is the refugee and asylum policy debates. 

While the far-right party FPÖ has gained popularity with extremist views such as closing off Austria entirely for asylum seekers, the centre-right ÖVP has also presented tougher stances. The chancellor’s party has publicly defended the creation of “asylum centres” for processing outside of the EU borders. Chancellor Karl Nehammer has also fully supported the UK’s plan to deport asylum seekers to “safe third countries”

A tougher stance on refugee policies has proved popular in Austria, and the centre-left SPÖ party has also seemed to lean toward stricter ideas more recently. However, since the party got a new leadership, a precise migration programme had not been presented yet. However, the issue was pressing, particularly following the party’s poor performance in the EU elections, when migration played a key role.

READ ALSO: How a change in the profile of asylum seekers is impacting Austria

So what are the party’s plans?

The SPÖ presented a new” masterplan” for asylum, migration, and integration. According to the SPÖ, the “Doskozil-Kaiser paper,” which has existed since 2018, has been “sharpened,” resulting in an “offensive paper” with approaches for action, said SPÖ leader Andreas Babler.

The aim was to “ensure balance and order” under “the premise of humanity”, said Babler at a press conference in Vienna.

The plan’s main points include faster procedures at the EU’s external borders, a fair distribution of refugees within the EU, and sanctions against countries that refuse to do so. With this, the SPÖ wants to reach a 75 percent reduction in the number of asylum applications. 

For example, the party leaders mentioned Hungary, where there were only 45 applications in 2023, compared to almost 60,000 in Austria. They said Hungary had to be persuaded to cooperate by exhausting all legal and political means.

The SPÖ proposes procedure centres along the EU’s external borders so that procedures can be completed more quickly and people do not hand themselves over to smugglers. The EU should set up “common centres for asylum applications”, for example, in embassies. 

People should only be distributed within the EU once the asylum applications have been assessed favourably. As a first step, cooperation between individual states could occur without the consent of all EU member states.

READ ALSO: When do Austrians think an immigrant is successfully integrated?

‘Integration year’ and deportation

The SPÖ plan contains an “extended mandatory integration year” that would ensure refugees get “German and values courses.” However, severe penalties, including deportation, would be imposed for serious offences or “repeated minor crimes.” 

Instead of mass accommodation, the SPÖ proposes small centres enabling better contact with the population. Women’s rights should also become a “central guiding principle for integration”. Women’s self-determination is the top priority, said SPÖ women’s spokesperson Eva-Maria Holzleitner.

The party reiterated that asylum is fundamentally a human right that should never be questioned. However, those who are denied their asylum request would be deported to their country of origin or safe third countries, the party advocates. 

READ ALSO: Who needs to take Austria’s integration exam?

Criticism from the right

Over the weekend, party representatives from far-right FPÖ and centre-right ÖVP have come out to criticise the SPÖ proposals. 

An FPÖ spokesperson said the plan is “pure PR policy” and that, in truth, the SPÖ had “always opened the door to illegal mass immigration under the guise of asylum”. The ÖVP said the proposals are just “headlines instead of concrete proposals for solutions”. 

In a press release, the party said that no capacity limit was presented, showing “that the SPÖ has still not realised that illegal migration cannot be countered by further squeezing the Austrian taxpayer”

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