Austria Opposes Expansion Of EU's Borderless Schengen Area - Minister

Austria will not support the admission of Croatia, Romania and Bulgaria to the European Union's visa-less Schengen area, Interior Minister Gerhard Karner said on Friday

MOSCOW (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 18th November, 2022) Austria will not support the admission of Croatia, Romania and Bulgaria to the European Union's visa-less Schengen area, Interior Minister Gerhard Karner said on Friday.

The European Commission proposed this week that the three be finally allowed to join the 26-nation area after years of faithfully following its rules without enjoying full benefits of being a Schengen member.

"Expanding a broken system won't work. My position as interior minister is clear: I cannot accept that border controls will be gone," Karner told public radio Oe1.

Some 100,000 migrants have been detained after crossing illegally into Austria this year, the minister estimated. Of them, 75,000 made it into Austria without being registered in another EU country, although they traveled through the Balkans.

"It is wrong to abolish border controls in this situation," Karner argued.

Contrarily, many western and northern EU nations have sought to reinstate border checks since a wave of migration swept Europe in 2015. Western Balkan immigration routes will again be the spotlight at the meeting of the EU interior ministers in Brussels next week.