Austria Announces Plans To Build Fences To Manage Migrant Flow

Austria, a critic of building fences to keep out refugees and migrants, has announced plans to erect barriers along parts of its border, but insisted the move was meant solely to bring order to the flow of people entering the country.
Slovenia, the main entry point into Austria, also said it was ready to build a fence, threatening to set off a chain reaction from other countries along the land route used by those seeking a better life in the EU.

Germany, the country of choice of many people fleeing regions hit by war and hardship, also moved to reduce the migrant and refugee load. The interior minister, Thomas de Maizière, announced that while Syrian citizens were mostly accepted, many of the Afghans arriving in the country would likely be sent back to their homeland.
Austria’s interior minister, Johanna Mikl-Leitner, told parliament construction of “technical barriers” would begin after about 10 days of planning but gave no exact date for work on the project to begin.
In separate comments to the state broadcaster ORF, she spoke of the need for a fence to maintain public order. The defence minister, Gerald Klug, said containers or railings could be set up to “to control the refugees in an orderly way”.
Mikl-Leitner insisted there were no plans “to build a fence around Austria”. Still, the project is likely to run into domestic and international criticism for the signal it sends to other nations struggling to cope with the migrant influx, and because of associations with the razor-wire fence Hungary has built to keep migrants out, a move Austria strongly criticised.
Since Hungary sealed its borders a few weeks ago, thousands of migrants using the western Balkans route into Austria and beyond have been entering Croatia and then Slovenia daily.

Slovenian officials suggested even before Austria’s announcement that they, too, were considering a fence, in their case on the border with Croatia, insisting their small nation cannot cope with the influx,
The Slovenian prime minister, Miro Cerar, reiterated those plans, saying, “if necessary, we are ready to put up the fence immediately” if a weekend plan by EU and Balkan leaders fails to stem the migrant surge.
Austria, in opposing fencing off border areas, invoked the principle of free movement within the EU’s internal borders. However, its attempts to cope with the migrant influx have been complicated by recent moves by Germany, the country of choice of many migrants, to slow their entry from Austria.
Mikl-Leitner acknowledged a possible effect on migrants in Slovenia if Austria builds barriers, but said Austria was struggling to deal with the situation “because Germany is taking too few” migrants.