(16 Nov 2022)
RESTRICTION SUMMARY:
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Belgrade - 16 November 2022
1. Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic, Austrian chancellor Karl Nehammer and Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban arriving to the news conference
2. Various of Vucic, Nehammer and Orban signing agreement
3. Vucic, Nehammer and Orban shaking hands
4. News conference
5. SOUNDBITE (Serbian) Aleksandar Vucic, Serbia President:
"We agreed to jointly, with the support from Hungary and Austria, engage higher number of policemen on the border with North Macedonia and substantial equipment, including cars with thermal vision cameras in order to try to move the defense line toward south."
6. Serbia flags
7. SOUNDBITE (Serbian) Aleksandar Vucic, Serbia President:
"We want for Hungary and Austria to move the defense line toward south and later we are ready to move further south together with North Macedonia and thus protect both Europe and our own country."
8. Serbian and Austrian flag
9. SOUNDBITE (German) Karl Nehammer, Austrian Chancellor:
"The EU's asylum system has failed. We have come to the point where individual EU countries are looking for new forms of partnership outside what is possible in the EU."
10. Hungarian flags
11. SOUNDBITE (Hungarian) Viktor Orban, Hungarian Prime Minister:
"I believe in one and only method, based on experience from previous years, that we do not need to manage migration, we need to stop it. Illegal migrants will not enter the country only if they know they will not succeed. I the are convinced they can cross the border, they will try. We need to show them (migrants) that they cannot cross."
12. Vucic, Nehammer and Orban shaking hands and leaving
STORYLINE:
Austria, Hungary and Serbia on Tuesday held another top-level meeting dedicated to curbing migration, including by sending more than 100 men, with vehicles equipped with night vision cameras and drones to the border with North Macedonia.
Austria and Hungary also pledged to help Serbia organize deportations by plane of people who come to the Balkan nation from the so-called 'safe countries' and are not eligible for asylum in the member states of the European Union or in Serbia, officials said.
"We have come to the point where individual EU countries are looking for new forms of partnership outside what is possible in the EU," said Austria's Chancellor Karl Nehammer, who added: "The EU's asylum system has failed."
Officials from Austria, Hungary and Serbia already held a similar meeting weeks ago and lower-level talks have been held in the meantime. The initiative came after countries reported a significant increase in the numbers of migrants moving along the so-called Balkan route.
Migrants come into Serbia from North Macedonia and Bulgaria after arriving there from Turkey and Greece. From Serbia, people who are trying to reach Western Europe proceed toward the neighboring EU member nations Hungary, Romania or Croatia and on further west from there.
Experts have said that the so-called Balkan land route of migration activates more in bad weather when the already perilous crossings over the Mediterranean and Aegean seas become even more dangerous. Most migrants come from Afghanistan and Syria, but there are also people fleeing poverty and violence in Africa or Asia.
Serbia has been under pressure also to revoke its relaxed visa regime with countries in Asia and Africa that have become a source of migration.
President Aleksandar Vucic said that after abolishing visa-free rules with Tunisia and Burundi, Belgrade will change regulations with two more countries by the end of the year.
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