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Czech PM rejects mandatory redistribution of asylum seekers within EU

Xinhua, April 7, 2016 Adjust font size:

In reaction to the new asylum rules that the European Commission(EC) proposed on Wednesday, Czech Prime Minister Bohuslav Sobotka said on his Twitter account that the government would not agree to any system of mandatory permanent quotas for the redistribution of asylum seekers across the European Union(EU).

Sobotka said the migration policy must remain under the control of individual member states, the permanent refugee redistribution mechanism proposed by EC is "absolutely unacceptable" for the Czech government.

He said besides Czech, a number of EU member states repeatedly rejected these plans. The EC tabled again this dead proposal of permanent quotas was counterproductive, especially as it was fully aware that it could not win support from the member states,said Sobotka.

Czech President Milos Zeman's spokesman Jiri Ovcacek said Zeman resolutely opposed "the masked quotas."

Czech Interior Minister Milan Chovanec said he believed the refugee redistribution quotas would never work. The case of 25 Iraqi refugees who left the Czech resettlement programme last week and asked for asylum in Germany proved this.

The EC presented two variants of new rules for the decision making on asylum affairs in the EU, both of the rules include the redistribution of migrants. The first variant introduces permanent redistribution quotas. The other variant replaces the system, within which the first EU member state that refugees enter deals with their asylum applications, with an immediate redistribution system. Enditem