Prague, Feb 19 (CTK) – Prime Minister in resignation Andrej Babis wants to visit one of the refugee camps (hotspots) in Italy in May to assess possible Czech aid to refugees living there, daily Hospodarske noviny (HN) wrote on Monday, referring to government’s spokeswoman Barbora Peterova.
Babis’s plan is in line with the effort to get rid of Brussels’ legal action against the Czech Republic over its rejection of the obligatory refugee quotas.
Babis now wants to show that Prague is willing to help solve the migrant crisis, though not through the quotas, and consequently that the rest of the EU has nothing to blame the Czech Republic for. This follows up the initiative of the previous coalition government, which also comprised of Babis’s ANO.
The programme of Babis’s trip to Italy is still being prepared, but he has already proposed that the Czech aid could go to children living in refugee camps, three well-informed sources confirmed to HN.
The Czech Republic may finance the construction of a kindergarten, Babis has proposed.
Peterova has only generally said “a long-term Czech priority is to help the countries afflicted by migration directly on the spot.”
The target of the Czech aid would also point out that among migrants heading for Europe, there are not only adult men, who may pose a security risk, but also vulnerable people, such as many children.
The European Commission (EC) has filed lawsuits with the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) against the Czech Republic, Poland and Hungary over the violation of the EU regulations on the relocation of asylum seekers. The CJEU may impose very high fines on these countries.
The Czech Republic primarily argues that the quotas do not work in practice. It has also dismissed the criticism that is does not help tackle the migrant crisis’s consequences.
On the contrary, the Czech Republic is one of the most generous countries in terms of financial and other forms of aid. Most recently, it sent more than 220 million crowns to enable to detain as many migrants as possible in Libya and prevent their departure for Europe. Prague also deployed police officers to protect the EU outer border, HN writes.
The plan to help the refugees’ children in Italy should be another argument in favour of the Czech Republic. It is also to improve its position in negotiations about the currently debated proposal for obligatory admission of further refugees based on new quotas if any EU country were hit by a strong migrant wave.
MEP for ANO Dita Charanzova, one of Babis’s advisers in EU issues, has praised the Czech Republic’s active involvement in the migration crisis. “I hope that the other EU countries will appreciate the effort,” she told HN.
Prague has not yet consulted Italian representatives on Babis’s intention to provide help for a particular refugee camp.
However, Italian PM Paolo Gentiloni positively assessed the aid of the Czech Republic and other Visegrad Four (V4) countries (Hungary, Poland and Slovakia) to the stabilisation of Libya at the end of last year.
Yet he at the same time confirmed that Rome insisted on the Czech Republic and other Visegrad countries accepting refugees according to the valid agreements, which is in harmony with the EC’s stance.
This indicates that Prague might ward off the European lawsuit if it made a gesture, for instance, offered to accept a limited number of provable refugees, HN writes.
According to the mechanism of the EU refugee quotas approved in 2015 to help Greece and Italy, to which many migrants heading for Europe from Syria and other, primarily African countries, came, the Czech Republic was to accept some 2500 and assess their right to asylum. However, it only accepted 12 people and then the government halted the programme.
