Cut EU funds to states who don't take enough refugees

(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.

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