Prague, Aug 3 (CTK) – Czech Finance Minister and ANO chairman Andrej Babis wants to reject the EU refugee quotas even at the cost of sanctions, he has written Facebook, daily Pravo reports yesterday.
“We must do our utmost to reject migrants, including the quotas in which we were outvoted. I want to reject the quotas even at the cost of sanctions,” Babis wrote on Facebook from his holiday in France on Monday.
“Europe must close its external Schengen border as soon as possible. I have been talking about it exactly for one year. We can and should build a fence there and not along the Czech border. Immediately,” he added.
The EU interior ministers approved the quotas for the redistribution of tens of thousands of refugees across the EU last September. The Czech Republic, Hungary, Romania and Slovakia voted against it, but the decision is binding on all member states. Budapest and Bratislava filed a legal complaint against it with the European Court of Justice.
Pravo writes, referring to analysts, it is clear that migration and security issues will dominate the autumn regional and Senate elections though the election campaign is not in full swing yet.
This is also why mainstream parties have already highlighted migration problems and the government ANO has done it very strongly, including Babis’s comments on Facebook, Pravo says.
The senior government Social Democrats (CSSD), ANO’s major rival in the upcoming polls, approach the migration issue differently. At a press conference before the summer holiday, the CSSD demanded an additional three billion crowns from Babis’s ministry to raise the number of police and fight terrorism, Pravo says.
