6 February 2016, 10:53 GMT
MOSCOW (Sputnik) — In late January, Johann Bezdeka, the head of Interior Ministry's Department for Immigration Police, Crisis Management and Civil Protection said that 90,000 have applied for asylum in the country since September 2015. Austria initially budgeted for 35,000 asylum seekers a year at a cost of 11,000 euros per person.
“In times of the financial crisis, the European Commission has mostly acted as the agent of the Member States. Concerning the migration crisis it is high time the Commission returned to its normal function as an independent institution representing the general Community interest and start acting as such," Schelling said.
Schelling’s letter, addressed to European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker and Vice President Kristalina Georgieva, was partly published by the Kurier daily.
Europe has been experiencing a major migrant crisis, as hundreds of thousands of people flee conflict-torn states in North Africa and the Middle East in an effort to find a better life in stable and prosperous European states, such as Austria and Germany. The EU border agency Frontex detected over 1.8 million illegal border crossings in 2015, in contrast to some 283,000 in 2014.
In September, the European Commission announced a quota scheme, providing for the resettlement of 160,000 refugees currently located in Greece, Italy and Hungary, throughout other European member states over the next two years.
