Germany, Austria renew support for EU-Turkey deal

BERLIN (AA) - Germany and Austria renewed Thursday their support for the EU-Turkey refugee deal, calling for a fair distribution of people among the member states.

“Both of our countries support the EU-Turkey agreement,” German Chancellor Angela Merkel said at a joint news conference with Austrian counterpart Christian Kern in Berlin.

“We would like to better protect our external borders; we would like to better address the root causes of migration,” she said.

Kern stressed the importance of the EU-Turkey deal – entered into on March 20 – to address the refugee crisis and called on EU member states to share the burden.

“We need a fair distribution of migrants in Europe. For Austria, it is not tolerable and acceptable that several countries are withdrawing from their responsibility,” he stressed.

Kern said they are going to have discussions with EU members which have proved reluctant so far to take in refugees.

“We are not talking about putting pressure or pointing the finger at others. But [it is] important to demonstrate that the EU is a project of solidarity among members,” he said.

Austria and Germany witnessed last year their biggest refugee crisis in decades, as hundreds of thousands of migrants, mostly from conflict regions in the Middle East and Africa, arrived to these countries.

Many migrants used Austria as a transit country to reach Germany, which accepted nearly 1.1 million refugees in 2015.

Around 90,000 refugees took shelter in Austria last year, and the country is planning to take nearly 40,000 refugees this year.

EU members Slovakia, the Czech Republic, Poland and Hungary have declined to accept more refugees, drawing sharp criticism from Germany and Austria.