“We must also step up controls at our borders massively”, he added.
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The measures will be aimed towards an increased assurance of borders, the establishment of a cap number of undocumented immigrants to be received and the conversion of Austria in a less attractive country for foreigners, he declared.
The four-year cap of 127,500 refugees represents 1.5% of Austria’s population of 8.5 million and will be implemented by gradually decreasing the number of accepted asylum applications.
Speaking in Vienna one day earlier, on Tuesday, Austria’s finance minister, Hans Joerg Schelling, said Austria’s coordination with Germany on migrants is “business as usual”. “But if Germany decides to seal the borders, where will Europe stand?”
German Chancellor Angela Merkel who has been criticised by her own party for her open door refugee policy has again defended herself.
Her spokesman, Steffen Seibert, on Wednesday, declined to comment on the Austrian plan.
Saying the EU had six to eight weeks to end division and inaction on managing immigration, Mark Rutte told reporters at the European Parliament in Strasbourg that if that failed “we have to think about a plan B”.
The ban follows action by Austria, which announced last week it would bar all migrants intending to pass through its northern neighbour Germany to other western European countries.
“This is the hardest problem we’ve had to resolve in the Second Republic”, Mitterlehner said on ORF television before the meeting, in a reference to the modern Austrian state created after World War II.
“A limitation strategy may even be both morally and politically necessary in order to preserve the state’s ability to function”, he said.
Time is running out to turn the tide ahead of three key state elections coming up in March, when the right-wing populist Alternative for Germany party hopes to gain seats at the CDU’s expense.
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But for its part, the International Monetary Fund (IMF), in a report out on Wednesday, said the European Union states which take in the most people will get the biggest economic windfall. Austria’s interior minister said last week it would start turning away people who were no longer being let into Germany, prompting a knock-on effect further down the main route into Europe.
