Bulgaria and Romania are angry

Austria does not want Romania and Bulgaria to be in the Schengen area for the time being. The two countries see this rejection as a serious affront – especially since the real problem is another country, which Austria deals with very carefully.

Because of the large influx of migrants, Austria’s authorities briefly set up tents for accommodation in November.

Andreas Schaad / AP

Austria has just thoroughly spoiled things with Romania and Bulgaria. At the meeting of interior ministers on Thursday, the EU member states voted on the admission of these two countries and Croatia to the Schengen area. States that are part of the zone generally no longer carry out systematic identity checks. Croatia cleared the hurdle, while the admission of Romania and Bulgaria failed because of Austria’s veto.

Romania recalls the ambassador

In both countries, there is great anger about the blocker Austria, and the country is also clearly feeling this. According to the ORF radio station, Romania has recalled the ambassador in Vienna, which is a very unfriendly gesture. Romanian business representatives are also calling for a boycott of the country. Austria is strongly represented in Romania, for example by the oil company OMV and Raiffeisenbank International.

Meanwhile, Bulgaria’s Interior Minister Ivan Demerdzhiev expressed a suspicion that Austria had spoken out against the admission of the two countries for domestic reasons. The conservative governing party ÖVP fears that the domestic migration discussion will continue to escalate if the Schengen area is expanded towards the Balkans.

It is not for the first time in Austria that a violent dispute has raged in recent years because of the high number of refugees. Around 90,000 asylum applications were registered in the country from January to October; that is already slightly more than in the year of the so-called refugee crisis of 2015. However, the majority of asylum seekers want to move on, for example to Germany, France or Spain. They have friends or relatives there and hope to find a job.

Asylum applications in Austria are increasing rapidly

Austria is particularly upset because many of the migrants arrive in Austria via Hungary, but have not been registered in the neighboring country. In fact, Hungary registers practically no asylum seekers, although according to the Schengen rules, the authorities should actually do so when apprehending people seeking protection.

Instead, the migrants are deported back across the border in the south and east or waved through to Austria. In the first half-year Hungary registered only 25 asylum applications, In 2021 there were a total of 40. Migration experts are therefore calling for the Austrian government to hold Hungary accountable – not Romania and Bulgaria. There, Austria’s actions are perceived by many as arbitrary and an affront, and people consider themselves second-class EU citizens. Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orban, on the other hand, is courted by the Austrian government, which still sees him as a partner on the migration issue.

Meanwhile, Austria’s Interior Minister Gerhard Karner said that the Schengen system was not working. “We have to improve it first and then think about how to expand it.”

The migrants make the ÖVP nervous

However, the suspicion that Austria has exercised a veto because of the domestic political debate does not only exist in Bulgaria. There are also similar assumptions in Austria. Recently, for example, ÖVP representatives started a very superficial discussion about whether the European Convention on Human Rights should be tightened. Even then, it was said that the ÖVP only launched the proposal to distract from domestic problems.

The party has reason to be nervous. On January 29, 2023, elections will take place in the state of Lower Austria, a stronghold of the party. The ÖVP seems to be ill-equipped for this at the moment. In national polls, it has clearly fallen behind the right-wing populist FPÖ, which has always dealt intensively with the issue of immigration and has been successful with it.

Federal President Alexander Van der Bellen also took part in the discussion. He seldom did this before; since his re-election in October, however, he has increasingly assumed the role of moral conscience. He deeply regrets the government’s decision to block the two countries’ accession to Schengen, he wrote on Twitter. However, Van der Bellen also recognizes that Austria is in a difficult situation due to the high number of asylum seekers.

This has recently led to conflicts between the government and the federal states. For months, the Ministry of the Interior in Vienna has been asking them to provide more places for refugees. However, the federal states have not sufficiently complied with this urge. That is why Interior Minister Karner had tents erected in several towns in October. People without permanent housing in late autumn – that sparked a loud political dispute. The tents are now gone again, but the migration debate will remain in the country.

source site-111