Austria’s Foreign Minister Sebastian Kurz has suggested that the EU’s refugees be interned offshore rather than allowed on to the continent. He said the EU should look to the Australian example of dealing with migrant entries.
Kurz of the rightist Austrian People’s Party told a newspaper that Australia’s immigration policy should be replicated by the EU to deal with the current influx of refugees, AFP reported.
Migrants who try to reach Australia by boat are turned back or sent to internment camps in the Pacific Ocean countries of Nauru and Papua New Guinea where they are held indefinitely while their cases are processed. The system has been criticized by human rights groups amid reports of rape and suicides among detainees.
“The Australian model of course cannot be completely replicated but its principles can be applied in Europe,” Kurz, who at 29 years old is Europe’s youngest minister, told Die Presse in an interview published on Sunday.
