As a parent might talk to a child, Germany’s interior minister, Horst Seehofer, said last month that he was disappointed at Austria for the country’s continued refusal to participate in a European scheme to resettle child refugees currently living in the Moria refugee camp. On the night of Sept. 8, a fire swept through the camp on the Greek island of Lesbos, leaving most of its 12,000 residents without a bed for the night. By Sept. 11, Germany, France, Finland, Luxembourg, Slovenia, the Netherlands, Croatia, Portugal, Belgium, and Switzerland had all declared themselves ready to take in some of the children made homeless by the disaster. But not Austria.
The Alpine republic’s recalcitrance was “somewhat surprising,” Seehofer observed, in view “of the participation of a certain political party in the government,” a not-so-subtle dig in the ribs of the pro-migration Green Party, which joined a governing coalition with Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz’s conservative People’s Party (OVP) this year. But Seehofer’s cross-border insult was also a warning relevant to a far wider audience.
