Austria to step up border controls with Italy

The Austrian govement announced on Tuesday it would step up border controls at checkpoints along its southe frontier with Italy, Slovenia and Hungary to slow the migrant influx.

"There will be different structural measures from containers to further barriers" similar to the short mesh fence recently set up at Austria's main border crossing with Slovenia at Spielfeld, Interior Minister Johanna Mikl-Leitner said.

The govement also plans to create on Wednesday a daily cap on the number of migrants allowed into the country, she added.
   
The checkpoints Mikl-Leitner referred to are located in the states of Carinthia, Styria, Burgenland as well as Tyrol, which shares a border with Italy.
   
Austria has adopted an increasingly hardline stance as Europe struggles to cope with its worst migration crisis since the Second World War.
   
The country of nearly nine million people last year received 90,000 asylum claims, one of the bloc's highest rates per capita.
   
In response to the influx, Vienna already waed last month it would cap this year's number of asylum claims at 37,500 and deport at least 12,500 people.