Austria to build fence on border with Slovenia
Austria will build a fence along its border with Slovenia to slow the flood of refugees heading to northern Europe, officials announced Wednesday.
Austrian Interior Minister Johanna Mikl-Leitner told public broadcaster Ö1 that "this is about ensuring an orderly, controlled entry into our country, not about shutting down the border," Swedish media outlet The Local reported.
Meanwhile, Slovenia’s Prime Minister Miro Cerar said Wednesday that his country is ready to build a fence on its border with Croatia if a European Union plan to reduce the movements of refugees through tighter border controls fails. He said “if necessary, we are ready to put up the fence immediately,” the Associated Press reported.
More than 86,000 people have entered Slovenia since Oct. 16, after Hungary closed its border with Croatia, forcing refugees and migrants to seek an alternative route to countries such as Germany.
On Wednesday, Swedish authorities said they will no longer publicize the locations of refugee accommodations after a spate of suspicious fires.
More than 20 fires — many considered arson — have either destroyed asylum centers and buildings earmarked to house refugees, or rendered them temporarily unusable, according to the AP.
Firefighters were called to a former preschool north of Stockholm early Wednesday, a day after local authorities said the building would be used to house refugees, The Local reported. The media outlet said nobody was injured and the blaze was out before firefighters arrived.
In the southern city of Lund, the far-right Sweden Democrats posted a list of potential refugee centers on Facebook, drawing criticism from Justice and Migration Minister Morgan Johansson. A Sweden Democrats spokesman said it would not increase the risk of attacks.
Johanna Uhr, a spokeswoman for Swedish migration agency Migrationsverket, said in future, the centers "will somehow be kept concealed," but added it has not been decided how that will be implemented, AP reported.
Mikael Ribbenvik, chief operative officer at the agency, told the Dagens Nyheter that it should not be possible to get a list of addresses housing asylum-seekers.
Hundreds of thousands of people have fled conflict and poverty in the Middle East and Africa for Europe this year.
Officials in Sweden are expecting up to 190,000 refugees to arrive in 2015 — more than double the 74,000 previously predicted. Those numbers would place Sweden second to Germany — which is expecting up to a million migrants — in the European Union.
A further 100,000 to 170,000 people are predicted to arrive in Sweden in 2016.