The European Union meets in Vienna to discuss the controversial issue of migration

Ministers of the Interior of the Union of the European Union will study Thursday in Austria new projects to prevent the arrival of migrants on its shores, at the first meeting under the Austrian Presidency of the EU, which advocates in this issue of radical options.

Meeting in Innsbruck (south), the ministers must specify the idea, still fuzzy but very controversial, of "landing platforms" in Africa to welcome the rescued migrants in the Mediterranean, an idea launched during the summer. a summit held at the end of June in Brussels.

Migrant arrivals have been considerably reduced since 2015, but the issue of migration creates great tensions within and between EU Member States.

Austrian far-right minister Herbert Kickl (FPÖ, member of the coalition in the EU). Oder with the conservatives in Vienna) will receive Thursday his Italian counterpart, Matteo Salvini, also from the far right, and architect of the hardening of Rome in this case.

Salvini, head of the League, has decided to ban NGOs from migrants in the Mediterranean docking in Italian ports, and will ask its European partners "not to send ships currently on mission to Italian ports. international. "

Horst Seehofer, leader of the Bavarian Conservative Party CSU, who challenged the authority of Chancellor Angela Merkel on immigration will also attend the meeting in Innsbruck, qualified as "informal" and without decision-making.

The German minister has temporarily suspended his threat of unilaterally rejecting migrants at the Austrian border, which could have a fatal domino effect in the Schengen area.

– Agreement in July? –

Seehofer has already had a conversation Wednesday in Innsbruck with Salvini, described as constructive by both parties. The German minister even said that he could reach an agreement "in July" with Italy on the return of migrants registered in that country and arriving in Germany.

"Before accepting a single migrant to Italy, we want Europe to protect When it will be done, we will talk about the rest," insisted the Italian minister.

Austria, for its part, shares the only consensus among Europeans on this issue: the need to stop the arrivals of the EU "has managed to change the paradigm in the field of Migration and asylum, "congratulated Mr Kickl on Monday at the European Parliament in Brussels.

"Instead of focusing on home quotas, today the focus is on more effective protection of the" European "external borders, he added.

In Innsbruck, "for the first time, we will speak more concretely of the issue of landing platforms." The Austrian Minister

But European countries are divided on the viability, the legality and the definition of these "platforms", which several countries like Tunisia or Morocco have already refused to host on their territory.

controlled "-

Austria will also propose more radical projects. For example, in the future, it is not possible to apply for asylum in Europe, but from third countries.

Vienna also proposes to create centers outside the EU where asylum seekers and economic migrants, when it is not possible to send them back to their country of origin. origin.

"France will never accept installation solutions (…) that would consist of organizing evictions in Europe (…)", however warned Monday the French president. , Emmanuel Macron

Paris wants to convince Italy to accept "controlled centers" on its territory, that is to say new places of selection where economic migrants and refugees would be separated.

These centers would be closed, unlike current "hotspots", and would in return receive strong financial support from the EU.