Austria opposes the recently unveiled plans of the German government to resume passport controls along all German land borders in a bid to sharply curb the number of people entering the country without visas.
“Austria will not accept individuals who are turned back from Germany. There is no leeway,” 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, a formal procedure and the consent of the affected member state would be necessary for this.
He said that rejections within the framework of border checks at EU internal borders were not allowed, just three weeks before the Austrian parliamentary election.
All of Germany’s neighbours, including Austira, are fellow members of the Schengen Zone, which is normally supposed to allow control-free travel across all borders inside the bloc.
Earlier on Monday, German government sources told dpa the border controls will go into effect on September 16 and are initially expected to remain in place for six months.
The border checks are intended both to limit irregular migration as well as address threats from Islamist terrorist groups and cross-border criminal organizations, sources said.
Long-standing debates over how to handle migrants seeking asylum in Germany have intensified in recent weeks after a deadly knife attack earlier this month in the western German city of Solingen.
The suspected attacker, a Syrian citizen, had evaded an order to be deported from Germany to Bulgaria, where he first entered the EU.
Currently, asylum seekers are only rejected at German land borders in certain limited cases, such as if someone is banned from entering the country or chooses not apply for asylum.
