Foreign
The leaders of Austria, France, and Germany on Tuesday discussed the terror threat with EU chiefs killings in all three countries in recent weeks.
Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz arrived at the Elysee Palace for a working lunch with France’s Emmanuel Macron, a week after four people were killed in a terrorist attack in central Vienna.
The two later joined German Chancellor Angela Merkel and the heads of the European Council and European Commission, Charles Michel and Ursula von der Leyen, for talks by video conference.
Kurz wanted to “raise the pressure in Europe’’ together with Macron to advance the fight against Islamist terrorism and political Islam,’’ he told Austrian press agency APA on his way to Paris.
“Wide-ranging measures are needed so that we can live safely and can defend our way of life in Europe,” he said.
Macron has vowed to intensify an already planned crackdown on all forms of Islamism, violence or not, after the beheading of a schoolteacher and the killing of three people in a church in Nice.
Germany has also suffered a recent attack with prosecutors treating a stabbing death in the eastern city of Dresden on Oct. 4 as an Islamist extremist killing.
Michel on Monday called for a “European Institute to train imams in Europe”, while Macron is planning a similar project for France in spite the country’s official secularism.
Kurz, one of the most outspoken anti-immigration advocates among EU leaders said that better protection of the European Union’s external borders was a key part of defending the bloc. (dpa/NAN)
– Nov. 10, 2020 @ 17:27 GMT |
Tags: Austrian French German leaders discuss terrorism with EU chiefs
