Greece rejects visit by Austrian minister
Print Edition
GREECE’S migration row with Austria intensified yesterday, with Athens refusing a visit from Austria’s interior minister whom it accused of “falsifying the truth” over its border control efforts.
A foreign ministry source confirmed a report by news agency ANA that a request by Austrian Interior Minister Johanna Mikl-Leitner to visit Athens had been rejected.
“We confirm the report,” the source told AFP.
The snub came a day after Greece recalled its ambassador to Vienna for consultations in retaliation for Austria’s decision to leave Athens out of a Balkans migration meeting this week.
Austria has repeatedly accused Greece of failing to police its borders properly and allowing a high number of migrants to continue their journey to western Europe.
At a meeting of EU interior ministers on Thursday, Mikl-Leitner called into question Greece’s place in the passport-free Schengen zone.
“If it is really the case that the Greek external border cannot be protected, can it be still a Schengen external border?” she wondered.
An angry Greek Migration Minister Yiannis Mouzalas later retorted that Mikl-Leitner was “falsifying the truth” and “dragging Austria into increasingly hostile acts towards Greece and the EU.”
“Our country guards its borders, which are also Europe’s borders, in the best possible way. This is a fact confirmed by (EU border agency) Frontex, the European Commission and other institutions,” he said.
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