Austria wants controls along the European Union’s outer borders be reinforced in order to prevent illegal immigrants from pouring into the bloc, the country's chancellor Werner Faymann told European Commission president Jose Manuel Barroso in Brussels, as quoted by AFP.

Stricter regulation was essential in order to tackle series of problems, amongst which the escalating crime in the country, attributed to foreigners, Faymann reportedly told Barroso.
 
Faymann said that "security on the external borders of the Schengen area must be re-examined where necessary, and reinforced where there are deficiencies", as quoted by the AFP. Break-ins, blamed on foreign criminals, had increased by 50 per cent in some regions of Austria, according to Faymann.

Barroso in turn has assured the Austrian chancellor that the EC will "address the issue seriously", however he played down the argument that the latest crime wave had emanated from the expansion of the Schengen area in 2007.

"Some people tend to think it was good in the old days," Barroso was quoted as saying, but "criminality would exist with or without Schengen. Schengen gives authorities more powers to work with the authorities of other countries."
 
Regardless of the decision from Brussels, Vienna has announced it will take matters into its own hands, by deploying several hundred soldiers until the end of the year, to boost control along the borders with the Czech Republic, Hungary, Slovakia and Slovenia, AFP said.