Austrian border restrictions to signal end of welcoming culture: leaders

Austria is to implement stricter border controls at various crossing sites from spring with a government aim to undo a "welcoming culture" toward asylum seekers in the country, two of its top leaders said on Tuesday.

Speaking at a joint press conference following cabinet meeting, Chancellor Werner Faymann and Vice-Chancellor Reinhold Mitterlehner said the "massive strengthening" in border controls that are now to also appear at border crossing sites in the states of Carinthia and Tyrol represent a "Plan B," in that "Plan A," a joint European effort to secure the outer borders of the union, has not come to pass.

The tightened controls, said by the Interior Ministry to come into effect at 12 additional border crossing sites, should represent a "clear outward signal" that the political welcoming culture of Austria is over.

"It must be communicated that we have already reached the limits," Mitterlehner said.

Faymann said it has already been clear that Austria took in a large number of asylum seekers in 2015, equal to about one percent of the population, and will over the next four years take in further asylum seekers to number an additional 1.5 percent of the population.

He added however that other countries "must also do something," and aimed criticism at those who are pleased that no EU-wide solution has been found to the crisis yet, saying they should instead work toward a joint European solution. Endit