Austria has proposed tough new anti-migrant measures, with its Defense Minister calling for a pan-European cap on migration, external application centers for refugees and “protective zones” to hold and deport illegals from the EU. [...]

The government in Vienna is working on amendments to Austrian laws that would allow troops to be sent to other European countries to help them "protect their borders" from illegal migrants and refugees, the Austrian defense minister has said. [...]

The US shares responsibility for the ongoing migrant crisis, according to Austrian Chancellor Christian Kern. Speaking on the sidelines of an EU summit in Malta, he stated that American “interventions” are in part to blame for the refugee flows. [...]

A new study from the Austrian Academy of Sciences shows that 40 percent of refugees in Austria believe religious commandments take precedence over the nation’s laws, prompting the country’s foreign minister to push for a rigorous new integration package. [...]

Austrian police have arrested eight people in anti-terrorist raids conducted in Vienna and Graz, the country’s APA news agency reports. According to the local Kronen Zeitung newspaper, all of those detained were from the former Yugoslavia. [...]

Austria remains in favor of border controls and an upper limit on refugees, Interior Minister Wolfgang Subotka told German newspaper Die Welt. Having imposed controls at its border with Germany in September 2015 at the height of Europe's migrant crisis, Austria wants to continue with them indefinitely, Interior Minister Wolfgang Subotka told German newspaper Die Welt on Friday. [...]

Women in several cities have reported sex attacks committed during New Year's Eve celebrations, the Austrian press reports. The number female victims of sex attacks in the Austrian city of Innsbruck has risen to 19 after the parents of several teeenage girls reported the crimes to police, Austrian media reported on Tuesday. [...]

A group of German activists have carried out a study which found that rates of sexual offenses increase significantly in the vicinity of asylum reception centers, Germany's Journalistenwatch news portal reported. [...]

A provocative video in which an Austrian far-right politician explains to asylum seekers, using a blonde mannequin and posters in Arabic, that European women generally don’t like being groped in public by strangers has stirred controversy. The video has sparked a lot of negative comments and a series of video responses, forcing Freedom Party politician Armin Sippel to take the video down due [...]

Austria’s interior minister has rejected a proposal that would require EU member states to grant asylum seekers the right to work, calling the plan “unthinkable,” as the country’s job market could not absorb the flood of new workers. [...]

The Austrian and Hungarian Governments are in a diplomatic row over thousands of migrants in Austria that Vienna says should be returned to Hungary under EU rules, which the Budapest administration is refusing to accept. Under the Dublin agreement, migrants arriving within the Schengen area — the zone in Europe where all countries remove internal borders — must be processed in the country o [...]

Ankara will send migrants back to the EU if the European Parliament won’t grant visa-free travel to Turkish citizens, warned Burhan Kuzu, a high-ranking deputy for Turkey’s ruling AKP party and former adviser to President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.   [...]

Europe wants a restrictive policy on refugees because small countries like Austria cannot handle unlimited number of arrivals, Laszlo Maracz, assistant professor of European studies at the University of Amsterdam, told RT. Tensions are rising at the Brenner Pass between Austria and Italy. [...]

It’s late in the afternoon and we are stuck behind a school bus in Northern Croatia as we drive through the what the GPS says is the miserable little town of Apatija, which my Croatian friend Juraj says literally translates to “apathy” in Croatian.   [...]

EU member states could soon be charged hundreds of millions of euros for denying asylum to refugees if the European Commission has its way. The scheme is considered one of the most contentious parts of the revision to the so-called Dublin asylum regulation, which allows northern EU countries to deport refugees to their port of first entry. [...]

At least 64 percent of French people believe that asylum seekers arriving in increasing numbers from North Africa and the Middle East are a “major source of crime,” a recent poll shows. The survey was conducted by international polling and market research company Ifop for the Russian Sputnik news agency. [...]

The Austrian government is about to enforce a tougher asylum law. According to it, the government will be entitled to declare a state of emergency. If this happens, no refugee would be able to apply for asylum in Austria any longer. The opposition and other critics speak of a “de facto abolition of the right to asylum”. [...]

The majority of Germans believe that EU-Turkey deal is a bad idea and will not work properly, according to a recent poll. Most also don’t tend to see Ankara as a trusted partner, let alone a potential member in the union. Under a plan agreed in Brussels earlier in March, all migrants arriving in Greece from Turkey would be returned. [...]

The Paris and Brussels attacks are blowback from what Islamic State terrorists see as betrayal by Western benefactors who thought using jihadists could bring “regime change” in Syria, says Pakistani analyst Nauman Sadiq. France under President Nicolas Sarkozy played a lead role in fomenting the insurgency against the Gaddafi regime in Libya in 2011, and Sarkozy’s successor, Francois Holla [...]

A new draft law proposed by German Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere makes taking German lessons and otherwise integrating into society a mandatory requirement for refugees seeking to stay in Germany for the long term. Germans are clearly not happy with their government's hospitable policy toward the refugees that continue to flee to Europe predominantly from war-torn Middle East and poor Af [...]

Libya's late leader Muammar Gaddafi and Syrian President Bashar al-Assad warned that terrorism would be on the rise in Europe if Western leaders help to destabilize the two countries, but no one listened. As a result, Libya and Syria have been plunged into chaos and now Europe has to grapple with a string of gruesome terrorist attacks. [...]

In the context of the current refugee crisis, leaders of the European Union reached an agreement on the deal with Turkey. The package of measures agreed on Friday morning is now awaiting approval by the Turkish government, German newspaper Deutsche Wirtschafts Nachrichten (DWN) reported, referring to Luxembourg Prime Minister Xavier Bettel. [...]