Prague, Sept 9 (CTK) – Czech President Milos Zeman and his predecessor Vaclav Klaus are only provoking hatred and fear in the public by their anti-immigration statements, opposition TOP 09 chairman Karel Schwarzenberg told reporters Wednesday.
“I admit that I feel sick of the quoted statements and the petition [by Klaus],” Schwarzenberg said, adding that no one in Europe takes Zeman and Klaus seriously any longer.
Klaus recently initiated a petition, in which he called for the government to ensure internal security and the outer inviolability of the state border with all means, including the police and military. He also rejected the pressure exerted for changing the agreements on asylum policy to make further migration easier.
Zeman said he shared the ideas in Klaus’s initiative.
TOP 09 representatives also challenged the statements on migration by Deputy PM and Finance Minister Andrej Babis (ANO), but they called them more moderate than those by Klaus and Zeman.
Babis proposed, for instance, that NATO should get involved in the solution to the migration crisis.
Both right-wing opposition parties, the Civic Democrats (ODS) and TOP 09, are opposed to the obligatory quotas for the spread of refugees in all EU member states, which the European Commission (EC) has been repeatedly pushing through.
The promotion of the mandatory refugee quotas proves the EC’s helplessness as well as its arrogant stance of the national states, ODS chairman Petr Fiala said in reaction to the EC’s new proposals.
The Civic Democrats welcome other proposals presented by EC President Jean-Claude Juencker in the EP Wednesday, such as the strengthening of the capacities to protect the EU outer border and an increase in the sum for humanitarian and development aid, but they consider them too vague, Fiala said.
The EU should primarily focus on the observance of the valid rules and the protection of its external border, MEP Evzen Tosenovsky (ODS) said.
“Jean-Claude Juncker has not presented any long-term strategic solution,” he added.
TOP 09 leaders say the Czech Republic should help people in need in the migration crisis, but they insist on the observance of the valid European migration rules.
“We do not support obligatory quotas within the EU. However, we add at the same time that the Czech Republic with a population of ten million is capable of looking after several thousand refugees without being ordered to do so,” TOP 09 deputy chairman Marek Zenisek said.
According to TOP 09, only the immigrants who are willing to share Czech values and laws should have a chance of settling down in the Czech Republic permanently.
In this connection, Zenisek named Christians from the Middle East, the Yazidis and the Egyptian Copts.
