The governments of both Austria and Hungary have issued firm statements following Turkish announcements that it has opened its borders to allow migrants and refugees on towards the EU. Both Austria and Hungary say they will defend their borders to prevent a repeat of what happened in 2015 when hundreds of thousands of migrants and refugees entered the EU via the Balkan route.
Lots of you have been asking us questions related to family status and migration. So we decided to gather up the most frequently asked questions and put them to a legal expert in the field of migration. Lawyers at the firm Schlun and Elseven which has offices in Aachen, Düsseldorf and Cologne responded to us. Here is what they said:
Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz argued that Operation Sophia promoted human trafficking. Germany's Chancellor Angela Merkel said that EU vessels beholden to bloc laws would be better than independent NGO boats.
Alma Zadic was born in Bosnia. In the 1990s - during the war in the former Yugoslavia - she fled to Austria with her parents. In early January 2020, she was named Austria's new justice minister - the first minister in Austria with migrant roots.
German NGO Mission Lifeline has referred to Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz as a ''baby Hitler'' on Twitter after the publication of an interview in which he criticized NGOs rescuing migrants.
Austria's first government coalition between the conservative People’s Party and the Green Party will have ripple effects on a range of issues including immigration. The two parties took nearly three months to iron out their disagreements -- with migration being the key issue that sets the unlikely bedfellows apart.
According to a recent study by IPSOS, most people in Italy, Austria, Hungary, and Greece believe that there are far more migrants in their countries than there actually are.
Foreigners living in Austria will no longer receive fewer benefits if they do not learn German, the country's Constitutional Court has ruled. The decision overturned a law from the previous right-wing government.
Integration of young asylum seekers and refugees is crucial to avoid robbing a generation of its potential to build new lives in Europe. That’s one of the findings from a new study by the European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights (FRA) which has been looking into practices for the integration of young refugees across the bloc.
As large numbers of displaced people arrived in 2015, some Schengen countries reintroduced border checks. Six are extending controls. That's illegal, EU observers say, and it undermines the idea of freedom of movement.
Austria’s interior minister has said his country will continue to conduct checks on the borders with neighboring Hungary and Slovenia. All three EU countries are members of the Schengen zone whose members don't have controls at their mutual borders. But six Schengen countries, including Austria, have reintroduced border checks for security reasons.
Interior Minister Horst Seehofer has announced plans to increase random searches at all German borders. The goal is to discourage migrants from moving between EU member states.