World | Thu Apr 28, 2016 6:40am EDT Related: WORLD, ITALY
Italy minister says will tell Austria Brenner fence 'unacceptable'
Plans by Austria to curb migrant flows by building a fence at the Alpine Brenner Pass between the two countries are "unacceptable", Italian Interior Minister Angelino Alfano said on Thursday.
Alfano said the plans were even more unjustified because the numbers of migrants passing from Italy to Austria were at their lowest levels for many years, adding that he would say so "very clearly" to his Austrian counterpart at a meeting in Rome later on Thursday.
"The logic of raising barriers is unacceptable," Alfano told Canale 5 in a television interview.
"I will tell him very clearly that unilateral decisions go against European rules," Alfano said when asked what message he would have for Austrian Interior Minister Wolfgang Sobotka.
Migrants fleeing war and poverty in the Middle East and Africa are crossing the Mediterranean to Italy in growing numbers and Austria has said Rome must stop them traveling on toward northern Europe.
Austria outlined plans on Wednesday to erect a 370 meter-long fence at the Brenner Pass, which is the busiest route through the Alps for heavy goods vehicles.
The Austrian parliament on the same day passed tough new asylum measures - including one under which migrants could be turned away at the border within an hour - that could be activated if lawmakers decided there was a threat to public order.
Any toughening of border controls at the Brenner Pass would slow traffic on an important route from Italy to Germany, Italy's top trading partner.
(Reporting by Gavin Jones, editing by Ed Osmond)
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http://www.reuters.com/article/us-europe-migrants-brenner-idUSKCN0XO1HS
Austria plans fence to stop migrants at major border crossing with Italy
VIENNA | BY KIRSTI KNOLLE AND FRANCOIS MURPHY
Austria outlined plans on Wednesday to erect a fence at a border crossing with Italy that is a vital link between northern and southern Europe, escalating a stand-off between the two states over how to handle a migration crisis.
Migrants are crossing the Mediterranean from Africa to Italy in growing numbers and Austria has said Rome must stop them traveling onwards towards northern Europe or it will have to introduce border controls at the Brenner Pass in the Alps.
But with Austrian preparations for controls already under way, Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi said Austria's move was "shamelessly against European rules, as well as being against history, against logic and against the future".
Austrian police in the Alpine province of Tyrol, which borders on northern Italy, presented plans for the installation of facilities at Brenner to inspect vehicles and process migrants, in the event formal controls are introduced.
Building work on some of the facilities at Brenner began two weeks ago but their scale was not immediately known.
"A security fence of 370 meters (1,220 feet) is planned," a Tyrol police spokesman said, adding that the fence was part of a system aimed at channeling migrants in the deep valley that the Brenner Pass runs through.
Whether the fence is built, however, will depend on the outcome of talks in Rome on Thursday between Austrian Interior Minister Wolfgang Sobotka and his Italian counterpart, the spokesman said.
Austria has taken an increasingly hard line on how to deal with the hundreds of thousands of asylum-seeking migrants, many of them fleeing war and poverty in the Middle East and elsewhere, who have poured into Europe over the past year.
After throwing open its borders to the arrivals with Germany in September, Vienna has since said it cannot cope with the numbers, and it coordinated border restrictions that shut down the main Balkans migrant route from Greece to northern Europe.
Italy and Austria are part of the European Union's Schengen open-border zone, but free movement has been jeopardized by the reimposition of controls at some key crossings by countries affected by the migrant influx.
Austria's governing coalition of Social Democrats and the conservative People's Party is also under political pressure as the anti-immigration Freedom Party's candidate secured a record share of the vote in Sunday's presidential election.
The Austrian parliament on Wednesday passed tough new asylum measures - including one under which migrants could be turned away at the border within an hour - that could be activated if lawmakers determined a threat to public order.
The Brenner Pass is the busiest route through the Alps for heavy goods vehicles and any controls there will slow traffic on an important corridor to Germany, Italy's top trading partner.
"The construction work will be completed with or without a fence by the end of May," the Tyrol police spokesman said, adding that border controls could be introduced before or after then.
(Writing by Francois Murphy; Editing by Mark Heinrich)
Received on Thu Apr 28 2016 - 07:13:15 EDT