Prague, Sept 15 (CTK) – Germany’s inconsistent policy is at present the biggest problem in the efforts to deal with the migration crisis, Czech Interior Minister Milan Chovanec (Social Democrats, CSSD) said on Twitter yesterday.
Flexing the muscles toward the neighbours across the border cannot hide this, Chovanec said, reacting to German Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere having said that the EU should restrict the payment from its structural funds to the countries refusing a compromise in the redistribution of the migrants in the EU.
“At present, Germany’s inconsistent policy is the biggest problem,” Chovanec said.
“Flexing the muscles toward the neighbours across the border cannot hide this!” he added.
This was a veiled reference to Germany’s Monday decision to resume temporarily its controls alongside the border with Austria, while it at first claimed it would accept all the refugees heading for it.
The idea that the countries rejecting the mandatory quotas for the redistribution of refugees should receive less money from the EU was allegedly mooted by the President of the European Commission, Jean-Claude Juncker.
The proposal has been dismissed by lawmakers from most parties.
“I am reluctant to believe that Germany will support the proposal that the payment to the countries that reject the idea of mandatory quotas should be restricted, as proposed by the EC president, ” Health Minister Svatopluk Nemecek (CSSD) has written on Twitter.
“To put it simply: you can hold any view, provided it is the same as that held by Germany,” he added.
“In my view, the statement addresses the voters in Germany,” Ondrej Benesik, chairman of the Chamber of Deputies committee for European affairs for Christian Democrats (KDU-CSL), said.
“At the current moment, I do not think it is relevant,” he added.
“It is a minister’s political view,” Benesik said.
Communists, too, are against the idea.
Party leader Vojtech Filip said the EC had tried to cheat the EU members when it wanted to redistribute tens of thousands of refugees in the individual EU countries at the time when many more were coming.
The proposal is also opposed by the deputies for the populist Dawn-National Coalition.
The EC now wants to make EU countries redistribute among themselves roughly 120,000 refugees now residing in Italy, Greece and Hungary.
Most of the EC members agree with the proposal, but the Czech Republic and other Central European countries do not.
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