Prague, Jan 14 (CTK) – The interior ministers of the Visegrad Four (V4) Group, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia, will meet in Prague on Tuesday to discuss migration with representatives of the Balkan countries that refugees are crossing, Interior Minister Milan Chovanec told CTK yesterday.
He also said the situation in hotspots was improving only slightly and slowly.
Representatives of the EU agreed on opening hotspots, detention centres for refugees, in the countries from which the highest number of migrants flow to the Union, at the summit in Brussels last June.
Chovanec (senior government Social Democrats, CSSD) said in yesterday’s interview with CTK that the introduction of hotspots was slow.
“I am afraid that if it continues at this pace, they will not be functioning, not even in the spring when another migrants wave might come,” Chovanec said.
The hotspots must start working to secure that the refugees coming to Europe be sufficiently checked to find out whether they pose a threat or not, he added.
In the debates on migration last year, the V4 countries rejected the mandatory refugee quotas.
“The quotas are complete nonsense and I think that everybody must know it now,” Chovanec pointed out.
Next week, the V4 interior ministers will prepare for a debate after the change of the EU presidency that Netherlands will take over from Luxembourg, Chovanec said.
Representatives of Macedonia that is seriously afflicted by migration have been invited to the Tuesday meeting.
The Czech Republic will send 25 police officers and donate 20 million crowns to Macedonia to help it deal with the migrant wave.
This is a solution to face the migrant crisis, Chovanec said.
He said he would like to hear at a meeting with Macedonian representatives what they needed and how Prague can help them.
The aid to Macedonia and other countries in a similar situation is one of the ways of protecting the Schengen outer border, he added.
“We must clearly declare that the Schengen area border is not permeable like a sieve,” Chovanec noted.
($1=24.983 crowns)
