Austria to step up border controls to slow down refugee influx

PanARMENIAN.Net - Austria announced Tuesday, February 16 it would step up controls along its southern borders, edging closer to Eastern countries in their defiance of Germany's push for a European solution to the migrant crisis, AFP reports.

The measures will be implemented at 12 existing checkpoints along frontiers with Italy, Slovenia and Hungary to slow down the influx, Interior Minister Johanna Mikl-Leitner said.

"There will be different structural measures from containers to further barriers" similar to the short mesh fence recently set up at Austria's main border crossing with Slovenia at Spielfeld, she added.

The announcement is a new blow to German Chancellor Angela Merkel who wants to promote a deal with Turkey at an upcoming EU summit to tackle the continent's worst migration crisis since World War II.

Austria still supports the plan but says progress has been sluggish in the face of the huge flow, which shows no sign of abating.

"We are preparing Plan B not because we want it, but because the implementation of a European solution is too slow," Chancellor Werner Merkel told Austrian media Tuesday.