Austria will back out of a United Nations agreement on migration, Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz said Wednesday.
“We have examined the possibilities in detail, and the Federal Government finally came to an understanding that Austria… would not sign the UN migration pact,” Kurz said, as quoted by the government’s press service.
The Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration is set to be formally adopted in the Moroccan city of Marrakesh during an intergovernmental conference scheduled for December 10-11. The final draft of the non-binding agreement was published on July 11.
Earlier in October, Kurz said Austria was very critical of some of the clauses of the proposed agreement due to substantive concerns over threats to its sovereignty, saying that Austria could advocate amending the draft.
Since 2015, Europe has been facing a migration crisis, with scores of refugees arriving from conflict-torn countries. In recent months, the EU leaders have repeatedly expressed their willingness to pay more attention to cooperation with the countries of migrants’ transit and origin.