‘This will not help Europe!’ Kurz blames rupturing EU on ‘failed’ migrant quotas

Sebastian Kurz, who heads a right-wing coalition government with the far-right Freedom Party is strongly against the view that migrants who come to a European Union country should be distributed across the member states under a quota system.

Mr Kurz told the German daily Bild am Sonntag: “Forcing states to take refugees doesn’t take Europe any further. The discussion makes no sense.

“If we continue this way we will divide the European Union and the Member States will decide on their own how many people they will welcome.”

He added that quotas were meaningless because migrants who want to come to Europe do not want to go to Bulgaria or Hungary, but to Germany, Austria or Sweden”.

Instead of sticking to the “failed policy,” asked the EU to support “militarily” further efforts to help migrants in their country of origin or in neighbouring states.

He appeared to back the creation of so-called “safe zones”.

Mr Kurz said: ”The border that separates asylum and economic migration is currently quite fragile.

He added: ”If (redistributing refugees) isn’t possible, then they should be helped in safe areas on their own continent”, according to whom “the EU should support this, perhaps even organise it, and support it militarily”.

It is not clear from the interview what kind of military support he has foreseen.

But European leaders have on occasion suggested the EU contribute to peacekeeping operations to stabilise conflicts in Africa.

Last week, Mr Kurz said in a Time magazine op-ed that the “robust control of the European Union’s external borders remains a prerequisite if we want to find sustainable solutions for the migration crisis.”

The countries of the Visegrad group (Poland, Czech Republic, Hungary and Slovakia) oppose the allocation system decided by Brussels.

As a Foreign Minister, Kurz had harshly criticised the reception policy carried out by German Chancellor Angela Merkel who opened the doors to more than one million refugees in 2015.

Since his election as Chancellor, Mr Kurz has aligned himself with Hungary and the Czech Republic in opposition to the German policy on asylum seekers and the distribution of quotas in the European Union.

The question of how to deal with streams of migrants fleeing war and poverty in the Middle East and Africa also divides Merkel’s conservatives and the Social Democrats (SPD) as they prepare for talks on forming a new government.

Hard-line members of Merkel’s conservative camp demand tight absolute caps on the numbers of refugees allowed to enter Germany each year, while a senior SPD official on Saturday suggested local authorities around Europe be paid to house refugees.

In his first speech since taking office, the 31-year-old vowed to prioritise “combating anti-Semitism in all its forms”.

In a speech in Vienna he said: “We will determinedly combat anti-Semitism in all its forms — those already existent but also imported into our country as an essential duty of our government.”

The Jewish community in Austria has raised questions over the anti-immigrant Freedom Party, saying they could foster a rise in anti-Semitism.

Freedom Party leader Heinz-Christian Strache, the new Vice-Chancellor, has also repeatedly said his party does not and will not countenance anti-Semitic rhetoric and will expel any member caught engaging in it.

The Jewish Community in Vienna has called Mr Strache’s pledges a “façade.”

The Freedom Party came in second to Kurz’s centrist OVP party in the general election in October.

Additional reporting by Maria Ortega