Austria is receiving a major blow from the European Commission at the moment, and this is because one of the very important European commissioners made an official announcement regarding the requests of the government in Vienna regarding the construction of fences on the Bulgarian border with Turkey, saying that no this is the solution to solve the problem of migration.
Austria would not be able to fulfill the dream of fences at the borders of the European Union, according to Commissioner Ylva Johansson, stating that money cannot come from the European Commission for all the wishes of the European states, but also that the problem of migration must be solved pragmatically, by convincing people not to come to the EU if they have no chance to stay.
Austria agrees with this theory, but also wants fences to protect the borders, plus the change of the asylum granting system in the European Union to accept Romania's accession to Schengen, together with that of Bulgaria, but it is difficult to say to what extent they will fulfill at least part of the requests.
"But we have to protect our external borders and use EU funds as efficiently as possible, so I'm not ruling out physical infrastructure. I have six billion euros for the protection of the borders of 27 member countries for seven years. We cannot fund everything that member states want.
We have long had a policy of not funding walls and barbed wire and I don't think that should change. But we should take a pragmatic approach. Do we need to reach people long before they reach our external borders? Sometimes it's a risk to put too much symbolism on the border."
