Austria is planning to build a fence along its border with Slovenia to stop a flow of migrants from reaching to the country. Interior Minister Johanna Mikl-Leitner said Wednesday that the purpose of the fence is not to seal the border, but to control the migrants.
"This is about ensuring an orderly, controlled entry into our country, not about shutting down the border," she told public broadcaster Oe1 on Wednesday, according to the Daily Mail.
"We know that in recent days and weeks individual groups of migrants have become more impatient, aggressive and emotional," said Mikl-Leitner. "If groups of people push from behind, with children and women stuck in-between, you need stable, massive measures."
Chancellor Werner Faymann also defended the decision, saying that there is a difference between establishing a barrier and an access point that has attached parts on both sides, according to Xinhua.
German authorities recently accused the Austrian government of mishandling the refugee crisis.
"The number of refugees has risen very significantly in recent days because of a backlog on the Balkan route," German Interior Minister Thomas de Maize said Wednesday, VOA News reported.
"Thanks to a huge effort, we managed to take in the asylum seekers and refugees in Bavaria and to distribute them further (across Germany). The behavior of Austria in recent days was out of order," said Maize.
The Austrian decision to build the border fence did not go down well with Slovenia, which repeated its threat to erect a fence on its Croatian border. The tiny Balkan nation has recently been struck by a huge surge in migrants coming to the country, as HNGN previously reported.
Migrants and refugees heading to Germany and Austria have been using Slovenian and Croatian routes after Hungary sealed its borders.
