Austria’s interior minister says the Balkan refugee route will remain closed permanently and that refugees should not be given false hope for passage. Johanna Mikl-leitner told reporters in Brussels on Thursday that “the most honest thing is to tell the refugees: it’s impossible to get through the Balkan route anymore. The Balkan route is closed.”
She said, “The biggest problem is that these refugees still have hopes and expectations, and these hopes are being constantly fed.”
Mikl-leitner said it is important to warn that the Balkan refugee route into Europe is closed because, she added, “that way you do not feed any hopes and expectations”. In recent months hundreds of thousands of people have travelled the route north from Greece hoping to settle in places like Germany or Scandinavia. Austria’s introduction of a refugee cap last month set off a chain reaction of border restrictions that has shut down the route.
Mikl-leitner told German daily Die Welt ahead of a meeting on Thursday with her European Union counterparts: “The closure of the Balkan route is going to plan and this clock will not be turned back.”