Austria: Bulgaria a reliable partner in solving refugee crisis
Bulgaria has long been a reliable partner in solving the refugee crisis, Austria’s foreign minister Sebastian Kurz told his visiting Bulgarian counterpart Daniel Mitov during talks in Vienna.
Bulgaria has been hit hard by migratory flows as an EU external border, an Austrian foreign ministry statement said. Since the closure of the West Balkan route, refugees have been seeking alternative routes.
The two foreign ministers agreed that the growing number of refugees represented a huge challenge for the European social systems and the European labour market.
Bulgaria Foreign Minister Mitov reaffirmed his support for the measures proposed by Kurz, that refugees must not be automatically redirected to Europe, the Austrian foreign ministry said.
In addition, there was agreement that the EU needs to create a fundamentally new asylum system that meets the needs of today.
A statement on the meeting by the Bulgarian Foreign Ministry said that in the context of the migration crisis, Mitov said that Bulgaria was doing everything possible to effectively protect the external border of the EU.
Mitov said that there were three important steps that the European Union must take.
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