Austria’s decision to leave the UN Migration Compact while holding the European Union’s rotating presidency brought “shame” on the bloc by aligning it with U.S. President Donald Trump, EU forces have angrily proclaimed.
At a debate with Sebastian Kurz in Strasbourg on Tuesday, critics including the European Commission president lined up to slam the Austrian Chancellor’s withdrawal from the agreement, which declares mass migration to be “inevitable, necessary, and desirable”, as the low point of the country’s six-month stint in charge of the presidency.
Jean-Claude Juncker, who has previously claimed the so-called Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration would somehow reduce illegal immigrant flows, said Austria’s refusal to sign was the only stain on an otherwise “really impressive” presidency, denouncing Kurz for sending out “negative signals” about the document.
“Progressive forces” in the EU Parliament were much more angry about Austria’s presidency, however, according to Euractiv and the BBC, which reported left-wingers were also furious over Kurz rejecting calls to push forward with creating a Common European Asylum Policy to spread illegal aliens across the bloc.
“Why did you shame the European Union in that way by refusing to sign this text?” complained Syriza MEP Dimitris Papadimoulis, describing the contents of the controversial agreement — which has been said to make crossing borders to access another nations’ healthcare, welfare, and more a human right, along with expanding “hate speech” to include critique of mass immigration — as “very moderate”.
European Greens co-leader and migration spokesman Franziska Keller, who will be leading the parliamentary grouping in May’s elections, hit out at Kurz for “embarrassing” the continent, denouncing the Chancellor’s caution over the UN agreement as having “damaged us all” in placing Austria “in the same corner with Trump and [Hungarian prime minister Viktor] Orbán”.
Austria was among several EU nations including the Czech Republic, Poland, Hungary, Bulgaria, Italy, Latvia, Romania, and Slovakia which chose to withdraw from the compact before it was ratified in Marrakesh last month.