Austria to Cut Migrant Quotas down despite Disapproval from the EU

Austria continued to anger members of the European Union when it announced that the country has future plans to introduce an even stricter policy regarding immigration plans.

Austria recently said on the eve of the EU Summit that it would be enforcing a daily cap on the number of claims from people seeking refuge. The country will now only take in the daily maximums of 3,200 migrants and 80 asylum claims.

Upon hearing Austria's migration cap, the President of the European Commission Jean-Claude Juncker and the EU's migration chief expressed their disapproval.

"Austria has a legal obligation to accept any asylum application that is made on its territory or at its border," EU's top migration official, Dimitris Avramopoulos, said reported by FOX News.

The EU's response, however, did not discourage Austria.

"I am very happy with our decision and we will stick to it," Interior Minister Johanna Mikl-Leitner said reported by Reuters.

Mikl-Leitner added that since Austria has already gotten about 11,000 asylum claims in 2016 so far, the country would consider reducing "upper limits further." The limit for the entire year was cut by more than half to 37,500.

The Australian chancellor Werner Feymann was not affected by the EU's response either.

"Last year, we had around 6,000 more asylum applications than Italy. We have had a lot more than asylum seekers than France. And anyone who has ever looked at a map knows that, for example, those two countries are larger than Austria and also have more inhabitants," he said.

The daily cap on asylum claims will affect people who are trying to enter the country at its southern border.

Germany, who has a very open policy when it comes to accepting migrants, added that Austria's new immigration measures might be violating European Law. Mikl-Leitner responded by pointing out that Germany has also used daily quotas.

"I do not understand Germany's astonishment, since Germany invented these daily quotas," MIkl-Leitner pointed out.

Meanwhile, the leaders announced that they would be holding a summit in March with Turkey, Syria's neighboring country that has taking in at least 2.5 million Syrian refugees since the civil war started.