Austria threatens to close Tyrol "waiting room" at Brenner

 ROME -- Austria has announced that if more is not done on the part of the Italians to prevent migrants from reaching the Brenner Pass, they will close the border at that point altogether.  “We need to go into the offensive,” said the Austrian Defence Minister Hans Peter Doskozil during a meeting of his party, the SPHE, in Innsbruck.

 “If Italy continues to let refugees pass, rather than sending them away, the rejected claims will transform the Tyrol into a “waiting room,” so we are asking Italy to let us control even on its territory.”  Doskozil also announced that despite the work that has begun to build a barrier on the Italian-Austrian border, his country could completely close the border at the Brenner.

 In case of emergency, the Minister said, “we’ll have to close the borders.”  He was also quick to warn that if Italy continues to let the migrants pass freely and Germany needs to keep monitoring its borders as has been done so far, “we would have a serious problem” in Tyrol.

 Another topic under discussion was the tightening of the already stringent asylum laws in Austria, which will come into play from June 1.  Their stated intention is to “announce border controls and create legislative measures.”  This is after the decision set by Austria earlier in the year to cap the number of asylum applications at 37,500 a year.  The minister concluded, “We have between 100 and 150 new asylum procedures daily.  These are amongst the 16-17,000 requests that we have been presented with since the start of the year.”

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