Austria urges Frontex to send migrants back to Turkey

Austria will extend its border controls if Turkey does not take back refugees picked up at sea on their way to Greece, Chancellor Werner Faymann said in an interview with the daily Oesterreich. He had earlier said that migrants picked up on Greece's external EU border should be sent back directly to Turkey because this was the only measure that would make a radical enough impact.

"Frontex must pick up the people fleeing to Greece. We have to save all of them, but then these people should be sent directly to Turkey," Social Democrat Faymann said on Oesterreich's website.

Faymann said this approach was "the only totally effective measure to break the human trafficking" of migrants, Austrian daily Kronen Zeitung reported.

Austria is set to introduce a new border management system at Spielfeld, a key crossing point on its southeastern border with Slovenia, which aims at speeding up applications and making the country less attractive to asylum seekers.

More such border management facilities on other routes may be needed if Turkey does not respond to his proposal, the chancellor was quoted as saying.

Austria, which has a population of 8.4 million and last year received 90,000 applications for asylum, has said that the number of refugees it will accept this year will be limited to 37,500.