With the iconic image of a railway wagon bursting with rolls of barbed wire, the Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán apparently closed the route that allowed hundreds of thousands of migrants to pass through his country six years ago.

Sebastian Kurz, the then foreign minister in the neighboring country, boasted that he had "closed the Balkan route" by coordinating border protection measures from Macedonia to Austria - a fame that would carry him to the Federal Chancellery in Vienna.

Stephan Löwenstein

Political correspondent based in Vienna.

  • Follow I follow

All the more surprising is the finding that is emerging today: More and more people are coming to Austria as illegal migrants via the Balkans, to a large extent with Hungary as the last transit country.

Already - not least in the domestic political game - memories of 2015 are conjured up, and thus of the year of the so-called refugee crisis.

Austria is a transit and destination country

According to the Ministry of the Interior in Vienna, there were 16,300 "arrests of illegal migrants" this year by the end of July. This shows a significant increase compared to 2020, when there were 21,700 seizures. Of course, there is probably a large number of unreported cases. These are the people who cross Austria undiscovered and who presumably have Germany as their destination country. But Austria is not just a transit country. Around 10,500 people have applied for asylum there themselves this year. In the two previous years there were 14,775 and 12,886 respectively - also increasing.

Most of the illegally entered people are picked up in Vienna, Lower Austria and Burgenland, i.e. in eastern Austria.

This is already an indication, which is covered by the realization of the authorities, according to which almost all current migration is via Hungary.

The migrants would get there via Serbia, sometimes via Romania, which means a detour, but has the advantage that the Hungarian border with Romania is almost not fortified.

According to a spokesman for the Austrian Ministry of the Interior, most of the migrants have been in countries in the Western Balkans for a long time, such as Bosnia and Serbia.

Smugglers advertise a pandemic

According to the ministry, a newer factor is emerging: the smuggling organizations are therefore promoting onward travel from the transit countries, because only a few migrants want to stay permanently in Serbia or Bosnia anyway. They also advertise the evolution of the pandemic. "In countries like Germany or Austria, medical care is much better," is the motto. These are often the same organizations with which the migrants have already been in contact and which they have already transported on twice: first across the sea, then from Greece to the Balkans, and now a third time to Austria.

The government in Vienna recently announced strengthening of the border guards in the east with martial recordings of Interior Minister Karl Nehammer and Defense Minister Klaudia Tanner (both politicians of the Chancellor party ÖVP).

The armed forces, which have been serving as border guards since 2015, have 1,200 to 1,400 soldiers there.

According to the Interior Ministry, the police are accessing several units, including a technical department with modern drone reconnaissance systems.

Pithy words from an SPÖ governor

According to the Interior Ministry, the main focus is on combating human smuggling, not on picking up migrants who would otherwise have applied for asylum sooner or later anyway. “It's about a signal that it's not worth dragging to Austria. That doesn't work immediately, but only in the long term. ”In 2021, more than 200 people smugglers have been picked up so far. That is 50 percent more than the same period last year. "It shows the success of the increased use of personnel," it says.

The SPÖ politician Hans Peter Doskozil, who was previously defense minister and is now governor of Burgenland, has sharply criticized the government for playing down the situation.

You have learned nothing from the past, said Doskozil this week on ORF radio.

The interior minister was not prepared for the situation, the situation reminded the refugee crisis in 2015. Doskozil added one more thing to the Kronen-Zeitung: It shows that the closure of the Balkan route was "just a PR gag of the Federal Chancellor".

Last but not least, that should have been an internal party signal for the next election campaign.

It was not the first time that Doskozil tried to overtake the ÖVP on the right in the conflict with its own social democratic party leadership under Pamela Rendi-Wagner.