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Many Eastern European nations send EU letter rejecting migrant quota scheme ( big lol inside)
European News
Many Eastern European nations send EU letter rejecting migrant quota scheme
By Michael Lord 7 June 2020
Many Eastern European nations — including all of the Visegrád Group countries, plus several others — that are European Union member states have sent a joint letter to Brussels stating that they reject any proposal by the bloc to require member states to accept quotas of migrants. They instead propose strengthening the EU’s borders as a solution to the migrant crisis.
The Visegrád Group countries — the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, and Slovakia — were joined by Estonia, Latvia, and Slovenia in signing the letter, according to a report by SCEPTR. The letter, which was signed by the interior ministers of the respective countries, spoke of “the need to build a cohesive and resistant migration management system in the event of a crisis, based on a balance between solidarity and responsibility,” according to a statement by Visegrad24, a social media outlet for the Visegrád Group.
The V4, Latvian, Estonian and Slovenian Ministers of the Interior have issued a joint statement to the EU, highlighting the need to build a cohesive and resistant migration management system in the event of a crisis, based on a balance between solidarity and responsibility.The letter comes as the EU is expected to announce a new version of the European Migration and Asylum Pact in the coming weeks. It is anticipated that migration policies will be altered in response to the ongoing migrant crisis that began in 2015.
— Visegrad 24 🇨🇿🇭🇺🇵🇱🇸🇰 (@visegrad24) June 5, 2020
The member states along the Mediterranean are pushing for quotas given that under existing EU legislation, the countries where migrants first arrive in the bloc are required to care for them. This has put a disproportionate burden in terms of money and resources on the nations of southern Europe. They contend that the job of hosting migrants needs to be automatically shared by all member states according to their capacity.
The letter’s signatories instead counter-propose that the EU should rather be strengthening its external borders to prevent migrants from entering the bloc in the first place. They also say that migrants who illegally enter the EU should simply be deported rather than hosted.
While the Visegrád Group (V4) countries have been resisting the quota proposal for years — even stating that they are prepared to ignore a judgement by the European Court of Justice to prevent it — this is the first time that they have been joined by other member states in their opposition. It is also the first time that Slovakia has joined the other V4 nations in opposing the proposal.
The European Court of Justice ruled earlier this year that the V4 countries had broken the law by rejecting quotas, as previously reported by Voice of Europe.
Representatives of the signatories’ governments made their opposition to quotas clear. Aleš Hojs, Slovenia’s Minister of the Interior, called the “automatic distribution mechanism,” as it is called, “unacceptable.” He added that adopting it would only encourage more migrants to come to Europe.
Similarly, Poland’s Ministry of the Interior said, “Uncontrolled migration movements are an acute threat to [European cohesion], which is why it is necessary to take strong action against illegal migration.”
The Austrian government has also voiced opposition to the quota scheme, but they were not signatories of the letter.
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