Prague, Strasbourg, June 13 (CTK) – This is a show of strength and a punishment of Central Europe for disobedience, MEP Jan Zahradil (the opposition Civic Democratic Party, ODS) said in reaction to the EC decision to open legal cases against the Czech Republic, Poland and Hungary over their failure to observe the migrant quotas on Tuesday.
TOP 09 deputy chairman Marek Zenisek criticised the European Commission for not having launched the legal cases against other countries for not having met the quotas.
This is why the legal cases are not credible, Zenisek said.
With its step, the European Commission has shown what the Czech Republic’s position is in the EU and what are the EU’s top officials’ intentions with the Czech Republic, former president Vaclav Klaus said.
“Our voice is ignored. The decision is not made according to our position, the decision is made on us,” Klaus said in a press release.
“The time has come to start preparing the Czech Republic’s departure from the EU,” Klaus said.
This is the only way with which to preserve and save the Czech Republic, he added.
Communist (KSCM) leader Vojtech Filip said the EC was incompetent and unable to learn any lesson.
Zahradil and Zenisek also criticised the Czech government.
Zahradil said in a press release that the government of Prime Minister Bohuslav Sobotka (Social Democrats, CSSD) had disastrously failed when it refused to join the complaint against the quotas lodged by other Central European countries.
“There is the only solution. The government should rapidly start negotiating a permanent exception from the European migrant and asylum policy and from other policies that are detrimental and risky to the Czech Republic,” Zahradil said.
TOP 09 agrees with the government’s argument that the quotas are absurd, but the government ought to have more convinced its European partners that the mandatory redistribution does not solve the migrant crisis, Zenisek said.
Filip said the EC was incompetent because it was deciding in contradiction with basic European documents against the free movement of people.
“I cannot imagine European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker taking anyone into a prison transport vehicle, moving the person to the Czech Republic, while we would have to accept such a person,” Filip told CTK.
ODS MEP Evzen Tosenovsky said the EC decision would further intensify the discrepancies in the EU and enhance the population’s negative attitudes.
“If the EC had really insisted on the observation of the rules, it would have opened the legal cases against Italy and Greece long ago for their failure to protect the EU outer border or against Germany which violated the European rules for granting asylum,” Tosenovsky said.
Former human rights minister Jiri Dienstbier (CSSD) has written on Facebook that it was possible to criticise the quotas, to try and change the decision and to insist on migrants’ security checks.
“However, it is unacceptable in a country with the rule of law for a government to pass a resolution that it will not respect its legal obligations,” Dienstbier said.
Czech MEPs agreed in Strasbourg on Tuesday that the opening of the legal case against the Czech Republic was no surprise to them.
MEP Pavel Svoboda (Christian Democrats, KDU-CSL) said the Czech Republic had made it clear for a long time that it disagreed with the quotas and it would not fulfil them, although this is a valid legislation.
“This is why we cannot wonder that the EC, which is in charge of exacting the EU obligations, has proceeded to the enforcement of the duty,” Svoboda said.
The Czech Republic has taken only 12 refugees from Greece, although it ought to accept about 2,600 people by September according to the quotas.
The Czech Republic, Slovakia and Hungary were outvoted at a meeting of the EU countries’ interior ministers in Brussels in September 2015 that approved the redistribution of 160,000 refugees across the EU on the basis of mandatory quotas to help Italy and Greece that were hit by the migrant crisis most of all.
