Off the wire
• Chinese-Tibetan bilingual training base for procurators inaugurated  • Eurozone employment up 0.3 pct in Q2  • U.S. stocks tick up despite downbeat data  • Chinese company joins UK's 5G development efforts  • Brunei public urged to avoid open burning  • Jordan urges US, EU to force Israel to stop escalation in Jerusalem  • U.S. General reaffirms military support for Estonia  • Xinhua world news summary at 1530 GMT, Sept. 15  • Cyprus investigating whether Zohr Egyptian gas field extents into Cypriot EEZ  • East China to observe largest tidal bore in years  
You are here: 　 Home

Czech gov't is ready to deploy army to Czech-Austrian border

Xinhua, September 16, 2015 Adjust font size:

The government is ready to deploy the army to guard the Czech-Austrian border in case the police force is not enough to handle the immigration wave, Czech Prime Minister Bohuslav Sobotka told Chamber of Deputies on Tuesday.

Czech National Security Council will deal with the situation on September 30, its members will also get the analysis reports from the secret services at the same time.

Sobotka again rejected the proposal of mandatory quotas for the redistribution of refugees among EU countries. He said Europe must deal with the causes of refugee influx, the current immigration situation requires a European solution.

He dismissed the view that the Visegrad Group (V4) countries do not show solidarity when they are against the refugee quotas.

Sobotka said that Europe must focus on protecting the external Schengen borders and building hotspots for Refugees that would differentiate between political and economic migrants. Besides, Europe must increase development aid, sign readmission agreements, stop the war in Syria, stabilize the situation in Libya and take action against Islamic State.

Redistribution of political refugees may have sense only in case if other measures are adopted, otherwise it will only attract further more economic immigrants to Europe, said Sobotka.

He said the Czech Republic is not a destination country for refugees. Czech Interior Minister Milan Chovanec said that the detained immigrants do not want to stay in the Czech Republic, they went and boarded a train to Munich when they were released from a Czech detention center.

By the end of August this year, a total of 990 asylum applicants were registered in Czech Republic, the number is only a slight increase compared with the same period last year, and about half of the asylum seekers are people from Ukraine, said Sobotka.

He expects the number of asylum applicants to be about 400 more than last year by the end of this year. Endit