Austria has sent back more than 5,000 refugees to EU countries that they had crossed on their way to Austria, its interior minister said on Thursday.
Three weeks ago, Austria and Germany temporarily exempted people fleeing the Syrian war from EU rules requiring refugees to request asylum at the point where they enter the bloc. The move angered neighbors such as Hungary, who said it would merely encourage more refugees to come. “If I remember rightly, we have sent more than 5,000 or 5,500 back from Austria, especially to Bulgaria and Romania among others,” Johanna Mikl-leitner said in Germany of the Christian Social Union.