Cut EU funds to states who don't take enough refugees
Austria's Interior Minister Johanna Mikl-Leitner on Monday proposed cutting EU funding for member states that don't take in their fair share of refugees.
31.08.2015
(AFP) Austria's Interior Minister Johanna Mikl-Leitner on Monday proposed
cutting EU funding for member states that don't take in their fair share
of refugees.
"You can't just cherry-pick within the European community," she said
of countries which have resisted accepting many asylum-seekers as the
European Union struggles to absorb its biggest influx of migrants and
refugees since World War II.
One way to put pressure on those states which don't take their fair
share, would be "scrapping or cutting financial support", Mikl-Leitner
told German public broadcaster ZDF.
"Either Europe fails because of the refugee issue" or it will emerge
stronger through a "fair" distribution of refugees, she said.
Austria has tightened controls on motorways near the Hungarian
border, where an abandoned lorry was found last week containing 71 dead
migrants, four of them children.
The minister said that building a fence, as Hungary is doing on its
border with Serbia, was no solution, and the idea that such a move would
discourage refugees was an "illusion".
Germany -- which expects to receive 800,000 asylum seekers this year,
four times more than in 2014 and more than any other EU country -- has
called for a fairer distribution of refugees between EU countries.