Slovakia, Czechia, Hungary and Poland, comprising the Visegrad Four, want to unite in dialogue with the European Commission on the issue of illegal migration, Slovak Interior Minister Roman Mikulec said after meeting with other Visegrad ministers.
Mikulec met with Hungarian Interior Minister Sándor Pintér, State Secretary of the Polish Interior Minister Bartosz Grodecki and Czech Deputy Interior Minister Radek Kaňa in the Slovak city of Pezinok.
“Many migrants who come here illegally do not want to stay on the territory of the V4 countries, they want to continue to Western countries, and we need to talk even more actively and openly with these countries so that they can resolve the situation with us in a way that we can manage it,” Mikulec said.
At the same time, the European Commission must give clear answers to V4 proposals, referring, for example, to “what we should do with migrants coming from countries like Syria or Afghanistan, who are non-returnable according to the current European rules, the Schengen Code and the Return Directive”.
The minister also pointed to the need for reimbursements from the European Commission’s budget for the implementation of measures to protect Schengen’s external border, without ruling out future border closures.
Poland’s minister also identified migration from the Belarusian region as a new topic.
According to him, security and border protection must be a priority for Visegrad countries, who he said must communicate positions together before discussing such matters at the EU level.
On Hungary’s side, the minister thanked Slovakia and the Czech Republic for the police officers currently working at the Hungarian border.
They are contributing not only to the protection of the Schengen-Hungarian external border but also to the protection of their own borders, he said, noting that more than 2,000 people are in Hungarian prisons on charges in relation to smuggling.
(Michal Hudec | EURACTIV.sk)
Source: euractiv.com
