Slovakia against mandatory migrants resettlement

Slovakia is against any mandatory resettlement of refugees according to any EU distribution formula, announced Slovak Minister of Foreign and European Affairs Miroslav Lajcak during a parliamentary committee session on foreign affairs on Wednesday.

Slovakia supports progressive immigration policy based on a comprehensive approach to mounting migration pressures and supports resettlement on a voluntary basis based on the means and capacities of EU countries.

"We have solidarity concerning all EU problems. Just because this migration doesn't affect us as it does the southern countries, it doesn't change anything. Slovakia is also an EU frontier country and we can hypothetically imagine that this situation coming from the east, and then we would be concerned in a major way. This is how we want to approach this issue," assured Lajcak.

Lajcak deems the situation even more sad in that it's a business from which smugglers and human traffickers profit, as the migrants pay 1,000-2,000 euro ( 1,074-2,148 U.S. Dollar) for the journey to Europe on old and overcrowded ships.

"One of the EU priorities is to stop this dirty business," added Lajcak, saying that the top priority is to avoid the deaths of innocent people.

European Commissioner for Migration and Citizenship Dimitris Avramopoulos presented 10 measures designed to immediately respond to the current situation focused on the thousands of illegal migrants currently trying to get into Italy and Greece - many perishing in the process. These measures will be a basis for Thursday's (April 23) EU extraordinary summit. Endit