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Slovenia, Austria call for joint EU efforts tackling refugee crisis

Xinhua, November 26, 2015 Adjust font size:

Slovenia and the Austrian province of Styria have called the EU to finally take a joint stance and start resolving the refugee crisis as a union, according to local official media on Wednesday.

Slovenian Foreign Minister Karl Erjavec and Governor of Styria Hermann Schutzenhofer agreed on Wednesday at a meeting of the standing Slovenia-Styria committee held in Maribor, Slovenia's second largest city, Slovenian Press Agency (STA) reported.

The Austrian governor told the press after a meeting with Erjavec that it was unacceptable that the refugee issue had been left to individual countries to resolve.

Erjavec added that he had agreed with the Austrian governor that the cooperation at the operative level was good, while "both of us would like to see a comprehensive migration policy at the EU level."

Schutzenhofer hope the EU think about what it is going to do, saying "Austria, Germany and Sweden cannot solve this problem on their own. We also cannot leave Slovenia, where thousands of refugees are coming every day, on its own."

According to him, the EU needs to protect its external borders better and help Lebanon, Jordan and Turkey to provide good accommodation conditions to refugees until they are able to return home after the war, the STA report said.

The meeting was held as part of the second session of the standing Slovenia-Styria committee, as part of which Slovenian ministries and the bodies of the government of the neighboring Austrian province deal with bilateral issues.

Currently Maribor is the municiple city of the region jurisdicting the small border town of Sentilj located, the biggest exit for hundreds of thousands of transit refugees to its Austrian bordering province of Styria. Endit