“We need more sensitivity towards Italy”. Austrian Chancellor Christian Kern told the Viennese newspaper Presse am Sonntag after a phone call with Italian Prime Minister Paolo Gentiloni. The Social Democrat leader warned his Foreign Minister and Popular Party leader Sebastian Kurz: "That's not going, we can't position ourselves against Italy", he told his rival in the October 15 election.
Kurz, after a meeting in Vienna with his Italian colleague Angelino Alfano, had asked to stop the ferrying of Italian migrants from Lampedusa to the mainland, otherwise threatening to close the borders again. In this regard, Kern defined Italy's regret as understandable. The chancellor also admitted that "an emergency that does not exist is staged at the Brenner".
