Austria: 'We decide who comes to Europe, not smugglers' - Chancellor Kern

“We have to decide who comes to Europe, not the smuggler organisations,” said Austrian Chancellor Christian Kern while presenting the results of a migration summit held at Austria's Federal Chancellery in Vienna on Saturday.
“In order to secure the borders we need border controls and there we should put a point. This is the most important issue, we need controls at our external borders, we have to decide who comes to Europe, not the smuggler organisations,” Christian Kern stated.
The Austrian chancellor also pointed out that despite the closing of the so-called ‘Balkan route’, some 50,000 and 18,000 migrants had arrived in Germany and Austria respectively. “There we see that it worked out [closing the route] but it did not work out in a way of solving the problems,” he pointed out.
The summit on migration is set to address the issue of border controls along the Balkan route, traversed by refugees attempting to reach central Europe, as well as refugee distribution within the EU.
President of the European Council Donald Tusk, European Commissioner for Migration Dimitris Avramopoulos, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Interior Minister of Romania Petre Toba and the prime ministers of Albania, Bulgaria, Greece, Macedonia, Croatia, Serbia, Slovenia and Hungary were in attendance of the summit.
It is estimated that 317,228 refugees and migrants have reached Europe between January and September 2016.