Breaking news. (photo credit: JPOST STAFF)
BERLIN - Austria's new Chancellor, Sebastian Kurz, called for an end to "failed" attempts to achieve a quota system for distributing asylum seekers around the European Union and urged new efforts to help refugees in their country of origin.
When he was foreign minister, Kurz, a conservative now governing in coalition with the far-right Freedom Party, was a strong critic of Chancellor Angela Merkel's decision to open Germany's borders to more than a million fleeing migrants in 2015.
Since becoming Chancellor this week, he has aligned himself with central European neighbours like Hungary and the Czech Republic in opposing German-backed proposals to distribute asylum seekers around EU member states.