Austrian Vice Chancellor Reinhold Mitterlehner |
VIENNA (Reuters) --- Austria's
Vice Chancellor said on Monday that Austria could not accept much
more than the roughly 100,000 asylum seekers it expects to receive
this year, following a pledge from its larger neighbor Germany to
limit arrival numbers.
Hundreds of thousands of people,
many of them fleeing conflict and poverty in the Middle East,
Afghanistan and elsewhere, have entered Austria on their route
northwest from the Balkans since early September.
Most have moved on to Germany,
but Austria still expects to have received about 95,000 asylum
applications this year, equivalent to more than 1 percent of its
population, compared with the 28,000 registered in 2014. Of those, 38
percent were approved.
"Around 90-100,000 -- a lot
more will simply not be possible," Reinhold Mitterlehner, from
the conservative OVP, junior partner in the coalition, told ORF
radio, pointing to bottlenecks in available accommodation for asylum
seekers.
"That's not the sum which
comes in addition every year," he told reporters on Monday.
"Those who leave, who get integrated...those who return to their
countries - that's roughly the room for maneuver which we have for
the next few years."
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