Published on 6 Jul 2017
This is a short commentary on a current situation/news that is related to Austrian Military History. On the 4th of July 2017, the Austrian government announced that it will ready troops to be sent to the Austro-Italian border in order to secure it, due to the large amount of migrants crossing into Austria. The Italian government wasn’t particularly pleased about this action. Additionally, at least the German media seems to be a bit upset as well.
Military History Visualized provides a series of short narrative and visual presentations like documentaries based on academic literature or sometimes primary sources. Videos are intended as introduction to military history, but also contain a lot of details for history buffs. Since the aim is to keep the episodes short and comprehensive some details are often cut.
For more information, here is a Daily Mail article discussing the situation.
Both Italy and Austria are members of the European Union’s Schengen open-border zone, but free movement has been jeopardised by the reimposition of controls at many crossings across the bloc since the surge in migrants seen in 2015 and 2016.
There was no immediate comment from Italy or EU officials, but Doskozil’s spokesman said there was no concrete timetable for the new controls.
The spokesman added: ‘We’ll see how the situation in Italy is becoming more acute and we have to be prepared to avoid a situation comparable to summer 2015.’
Italy has taken in more than 80,000 refugees and migrants so far this year, most of whom arrived by boat from Africa, making Italy the main point of entry to Europe.
Back in April, Defense Minister Hans Peter Doskozil visited the production plants of the armoured vehicles – Pandur crew transport tanks – that were sent to the border.
The tanks, with a production cost of €105million, were built at General Dynamics Land Systems-Steyr GmbH in Vienna-Simmering for the Austrian Armed Forces.
