Premier Matteo Renzi warned
some EU states at a special summit in Brussels overnight that
they risked losing EU funding if they fail to do their bit to
address the asylum-seeker crisis.
"Solidarity cannot just be about taking," Renzi said,
according to ANSA sources.
"The phase of planning 2020 funds is starting. Either you
show solidarity in taking and giving or we bet contributor
countries will stop showing solidarity too".
The comments were praised by fellow EU founder members
France and Germany, the sources said.
Hungarian government spokesman Zoltan Kovacc was quoted by
the Tanjug agency as saying later in the day that Renzi's
comments were tantamount to "political blackmail".
Also on Friday, Austria enacted announced caps on migrant
and asylum seeker entries, over strong EU objections.
It set up controls on its side of the Alpine Brenner Pass
at the border with Italy, and capped at 37,500 the number of
asylum seekers it is willing to take in this year - a quota it
expects to reach by May, according to Austrian Vice Chancellor
Reinhold Mitterlehner.
Austrian Interior Minister Johanna Mikl-Leitner has fixed
daily entry quotas at 80 for people seeking asylum in Austria
and at 3,200 for people passing through on their way to another
country.
Such moves "would be clearly incompatible with (Austria's)
obligations under EU and international law," European Migration
Commissioner Dimitris Avramopoulos wrote Mikl-Leitner in a
letter of which ANSA obtained a copy on Thursday.
Avramopoulos came out against quotas for asylum seekers
traveling through the country and urged Austria to "reconsider
the unilateral measures proposed".
On Friday, Austrian Chancellor Werner Faymann defended the
move.
"If every country were to decide the same (as we did, in
proportion to their population), we could distribute over two
million refugees," he explained.
"Our country has always been pro-Europe, we have always
given aid when necessary - during the Hungarian crisis, during
the old Yugoslavian crisis" the chancellor continued.
"Last year, we took in 90,000 people. Now we did not say
that because of this, we wouldn't take in anyone else this year
- we said we would accept more than 37,000," Faymann said.
"The rest is up to others".
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED © Copyright ANSA
