Interior ministers from 28 European nations meet Thursday as they face intensifying pressure to introduce new policies to stem migrant arrivals, in their first meeting after Austria took the EU helm.
The meeting in Innsbruck will focus in particular on coming up with a common migration plan, with Austria expected to push to change the EU’s migration policy so it is no longer possible to make asylum requests on European soil.
Although the number of migrants fleeing war and poverty has fallen sharply since a 2015 peak the issue is a thorny one in Europe and a key topic for the six-month presidency of Austria, where a conservative-far right coalition took power last December.
Austria’s hardline interior minister Herbert Kickl, of the far-right FPOE party, told journalists earlier this week that he would propose asylum requests be made in refugee camps outside Europe to “a sort of mobile commission”.
Only exiles from countries that directly border the European Union would be able to make their asylum requests on EU territory.