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Poor distribution of migrants within EU member states: Slovak interior minister

Xinhua, November 18, 2016 Adjust font size:

The fact that only between 6,000 and 8,000 refugees out of the total 160,000 have been redistributed among European Union(EU) member states is dramatically poor, Slovak Interior Minister Robert Kalinak said on Thursday.

"That means that not even those countries that have been in favor of the relocation have been successful in these terms. On one hand, we have a mouth full of words about human rights, but on the other hand, we see every migrant as only a statistical number," said Kalinak.

He said the EU only imperatively determined which migrants go to which country.

"We're claiming that migrants don't have the right to choose which country they want to live in. And which European court will make a decision to scrap the asylum procedures because migrants are choosing which countries they want to live in?" asked Kalinak.

According to him, the main problem is that migrants' wills have been ignored. He said the result was that not even proactive states had been able to bring an adequate number of migrants into their territories.

Kalinak concluded that "either we'll continue making this mistake, or we'll finally adopt a functioning model."

"Systematic controls: that's precisely the way we want to go and what Slovakia's presidency of the Council of the EU is fighting for," he said. Endit