Prague, June 13 (CTK) – The European Commission’s (EC) decision to open legal cases against the Czech Republic due to the migrant quotas is an opportunity to clarify Czech arguments against them, Foreign Minister Lubomir Zaoralek (senior government Social Democrats, CSSD) said on Tuesday.
The quotas do not work and by their promotion the EC would only force the Czech Republic to repeat the mistakes that other countries did in their migration approach in the past, Zaoralek said.
He also told journalists that Czech diplomacy was trying to contribute to the tackling of the migrant crisis by helping stabilise the countries from which refugees were flowing.
“I perceive this as an opportunity to present our arguments,” Zaoralek said in reaction to the legal cases that the European Union opened against Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic on Tuesday for not taking in asylum seekers under the quotas approved in September 2015.
“We will have to explain why the whole matter is nonsensical,” Zaoralek said.
The system of migrant quotas does not enable to observe all asylum procedures due to the time pressure, which increases the security risk in the country that is to accept the migrants, Zaoralek pointed out.
Moreover, the admission of a high number of migrants leads to the risk of ghettoes emerging, which happened in some West European cities.
“The countries with a different historical experience have hundreds of people whose integration has failed in their territories. And we would have to be forced to create similar environments where we would find out one day that we do not manage the integration either. This is a fundamental security problem to me,” Zaoralek said.
“After all, solidarity does not mean that we will be repeating the same mistakes,” he added.
Another problem related to the quotas is that the migrants would be forced to stay in the countries where they do not want to be, he said.
The Czech Republic helps solve the migrant crisis in another way, Zaoralek pointed out.
“The Czech Republic has a certain strategy. We are involved the most of all Central and East European countries in the key areas for migration. We are raising the means sent to these areas to help consolidate them and thus prevent migrants’ flows here from these countries,” Zaoralek said.
The EU countries must reach some compromise in its migration policy, Zaoralek stressed.
Ha added that he would consider legal proceedings between the European Union and particular member states a mistake.
“We need an agreement, a reasonable compromise. This is the only way to keep the family of 27 member states together,” he concluded.
