Austria boycotts UN migration pact

Austria's right-wing government decided on Wednesday to withdraw from a planned UN agreement to manage global migration, joining the United States, Hungary and Australia in rejecting the pact.

Although the Global Compact for Migration is non-binding, Vienna worries that its provisions may effectively turn into international customary law if countries voluntarily adhere to it over a long period of time.

"We decide who comes into Austria, and no one else," Vice Chancellor Heinz-Christian Strache of the far-right Freedom Party told a press conference.

The government objects to half of the pact's provisions. These include allowing family members to join migrants abroad, on education and health services, and on the option of resettling people who flee the effects of climate change.

"Migration is not a human right, and it must not become a human right," Strache said before the cabinet meeting. "That would lead to unimaginable political developments around the world."

Chancellor Sebastian Kurz of the conservative People's Party did not address reporters after the decision, but said earlier that the UN pact could blur the boundary between illegal and legal migration, and between those who flee and those who seek work abroad.

"We reject that," Kurz said.

No Austrian delegate will attend the UN conference in Morocco on December 10 and 11, when the Global Compact for Migration will be adopted.

Germany should follow Austria's lead and withdraw from the planned UN agreement to manage global migration, the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) oppositon party said.

"While the German federal government prefers to concern itself with its own incompetence at a crucial time, action is being taken in Austria for the benefit of its people," AfD co-leader Joerg Meuthen said.

Strache pointed out that there are also critical voices in Poland and Italy, which are both governed by nationalist parties.

Austria's step might trigger similar decisions within the EU, he added. "Who knows which European country might end up following our lead," he said.

The head of the EU executive body, Jean-Claude Juncker, criticized the bloc's inability to speak with one voice on migration.

"I regret it very much," the European Commission president told Austrian radio Oe1 in Brussels, reacting to Vienna's decision.