Acting as a Union in the Refugee Crisis - Commission supports Austria

Visiting a refugee centre in Traiskrichen (Austria) Commissioner Avramopoulos i called for a European response and announced that the Commission has decided to support Austria with over 5 million euros in emergency assistance from the Asylum, Migration and Integration fund.

After Calais (France) and Kos (Greece), Commissioner Avramopoulos travelled to Austria where he visited a refugee centre in Traiskirchen. His visit shows that the Commission will support Member States in every way possible.

On this occasion he greeted Austria's and Germany's generous gesture to welcome refugees, due to the emergency situation in Hungary. He emphasised that the Commission is working on a political level to ease the pressure from the Balkans route and will organise a conference in October to increase cooperation with the Western Balkan countries and tackle the problem together.

He said that the refugee crisis is a European crisis and "we can only overcome this crisis if we act as a true Union, if we act with responsibility and solidarity." He recalled that President Jean-Claude Juncker i will present new concrete measures to address the refugee crisis on Wednesday in his State of the Union Speech.

Commissioner Avramopoulos also announced that the Commission has decided to give Austria over 5 million euros in emergency assistance to support the country's reception capacity as well as its administrative capacity for processing asylum requests. 97 million euros have already been allocated to Austria for the period 2014-2020 for the management of migratory and asylum flows.