Prague, June 6 (CTK) – Neither the EU immigrant quotas nor EU sanctions for the refusal to take refugees are acceptable for the Czech Republic and Slovakia, Milan Stech, head of the Czech Senate, and Andrej Danko, chairman of the Slovak parliament, agreed yesterday.
“We will do everything for such a mechanism not being adopted,” Stech (senior ruling Social Democrats, CSSD) told journalists and Danko (government Slovak National Party, SNS) confirmed the stance.
“We noted disenchantment with the possible sanctions for (the non-acceptance) of immigrants to the value of 250,000 euros,” Danko said, adding that this sum is of a different value in Western and Eastern Europe.
Slovakia will preside over the EU as of July.
The European Commission proposed recently a reform of the EU asylum policy, according to which migrants would be automatically redistributed to other countries if there were a big number of asylum applicants in an EU member country.
The country which would refuse to accept the migrants could temporarily pay a quarter million euros per applicant turned down.
Big Western countries should take opinions of the small-size ones seriously and should not intend to punish them for their views, Stech and Danko agreed.
Stech pointed out that the approach to refugees had changed, for instance, in Austria and Bavaria, in harmony with the objections to “the open-door policy towards immigrants,” raised by Central and Eastern European countries.
Danko said smaller countries should not fear to express another opinion and hide their pride.
None of the V4 countries (the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia) wants to break the EU’s unity, but these countries want to deal with security and justice questions connected with the migrant wave as well, Danko added.
Strong EU member states should pay at least the same attention to different conditions for EU citizens working in the firms’ branches in Eastern and Western Europe as to refugees, Danko said.
Stech and Danko stressed that the Schengen border protection must be secured.
They also touched upon a possible candidature of a Slovak representative for the U.N. secretary general. The U.N. should play a more active role in the Syrian conflict, Danko said.
