2023-06-29 18:16:18
Chancellor Karl Nehammer (ÖVP) will receive his Hungarian counterpart Viktor Orbán and Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić for a migration summit in Vienna next Friday. The foreign and interior ministers of the three countries will also take part, as the Federal Chancellery announced to the APA on Friday. Nehammer is hosting the format for the first time, which was launched last autumn to combat irregular migration on the Balkan route.
The aim of the third summit of this kind is to “expand the strong axis in the fight against illegal migration and to further strengthen joint measures for effective border protection,” said the Federal Chancellery. Nehammer, Orbán and Vučić met for the first time in Budapest in October. A month later a meeting followed in Belgrade. The most important result at the time was Serbia’s commitment to end visa-free travel for citizens of certain countries such as India or Tunisia after Austria had noticed a massive increase in asylum applications from Indians or Tunisians. As a result, asylum applications in Austria have fallen significantly.
“The results of the last meetings speak for themselves. We have put the brakes on asylum, but we will and must continue to do so,” emphasized Nehammer when the summit was announced. He recently called for a “complete reorganization of the EU asylum system so that there are no longer any incentives for illegal migration”. At the European level, people continue to fight for it. “Until that happens, we have to help ourselves, and we’re doing that by working intensively together to put a stop to the smugglers and thereby prevent illegal migration.”
Austria’s cooperation with the two countries is not without controversy, as both Orbán and Vučić have been accused of attacks on the rule of law, democracy and human rights. The Hungarian prime minister has also been criticized for failing to fight illegal migration. In fact, a large proportion of the migrants apprehended in Austria come via Hungarian territory. Only this week, during a visit to Vienna, the Slovakian Minister of the Interior Ivan Šimko criticized the fact that the Schengen country Hungary does not register the migrants. “The problem is that Hungary is not sticking to the agreed contracts.”
Serbia, on the other hand, is currently in a serious internal political crisis. Mass protests have been going on for weeks, demanding decisive action against violence after two bloody rampages in schools. As a result of the protests, Vučić resigned from the presidency of the ruling Serbian Progressive Party (SNS) and announced the founding of a new movement. The tensions in northern Kosovo are also having a massive impact on the Serbian government.
Observers expect that Nehammer and Vučić will also talk about the situation in Kosovo. During a debate in the EU main committee on Wednesday afternoon, the chancellor emphasized that the region “needs our full attention” with regard to the unrest in Kosovo. At the same time, he said he was relieved that the Kosovar Prime Minister Albin Kurti had reconsidered his policy “thank God,” partly because of the influence of Albania. “It turned out that the Serbian approach is pragmatic, while the Kosovar one is ideologically driven,” said Nehammer.
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