Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz has met with Bavaria’s Premier Markus Söder to address the issue of immigration amid an impasse in Germany between Angela Merkel and the Bavarian Christian Social Union over asylum policy.
Speaking at a press conference, both Söder and Kurz emphasized how important it was to close the European Union’s “external border,” with the Bavarian premier calling for a “turning point in our migration policy.”
“In Europe we face a choice. Either we return to internal borders, or we secure our external borders,” Kurz said, adding that the EU had reached a point where “most countries agree that open external borders are the wrong way.”
Söder, in turn, elaborated that if the external border wasn’t closed, it would become “a problem for democracy” in Europe.