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December 8, 2017 www.intellinews.com I Page 2
EU to put Poland, Hungary and Czechia
in the dock for rejecting asylum seekers
member, Slovakia, largely abandoned its previously bitter anti-immigration stance after the general election held in March 2016, reassuring citizens that it remained determined to resist large-scale immigration, while pursuing the major goal of ensuring the country remains part of ‘core’ Eu- rope. Poland and Hungary have aggressively fought the migrant quotas demanded by the relocation scheme, while euroscepticism and anti-migrant campaigns helped the populist ‘anti-politician’ Ano movement sweep to a major victory in the October general election in the Czech Republic.
The relocation plan, introduced by the EU in response to a huge influx of mainly-Muslim mi- grants and refugees heading north to the Euro- pean continent, was formulated to ease the pres- sure on Greece and Italy where the vast majority of migrants were arriving. However, the Czech Republic has since agreed to shelter only 12 of the 2,000 asylum-seekers for which it was designated, while Hungary and Poland have received none. In all, the scheme seeks to relocate 160,000 asylum seekers according to quotas in line with the size and wealth of each EU member state. But the Visegrad nations have protested that the predomi- nantly Muslim refugees have no place in their homogeneous, mainly Christian societies.
Playing into the hands of the far right
The leader of the Czech Ano party, populist bil- lionaire Andrej Babis—who was sworn in as prime minister on December 6 but may have
to rely on the support of communists and neo- fascists to keep a minority government in office – told the BBC on December 7 that his country would continue to oppose the relocation scheme. He said the quota system had fuelled anti-mi-
grant sentiment and played into the hands of the far right, an observation his critics might make mischief with given that Babis may soon be rely- ing on votes from the far right in parliament in order to push through legislation.
Czech press agency CTK quoted Babis as saying that the system to relocate the refugees is "non- sense" and that he would ask the bloc to with- draw its legal action.
Babis says he wants to see the migration crisis addressed with a strategy aimed at going after human traffickers. He has announced that his first step on the international level as PM will
be to provide CZK200mn (€7.8mn) to tackling the migration situation in Libya as part of a joint Visegrad initiative. The move looks like an at- tempt to demonstrate to Brussels that he is will- ing to help manage the migration dilemma.
Poles talk of “providing public safety”
Poland's Deputy Foreign Minister Konrad Szyman- ski responded to the news of the ECJ suit by telling Polish state news agency PAP that his government was “ready to defend its position in the court". He added: “No one will lift the duty of providing public safety from the Polish government.”
The government of Poland’s populist national con- servative Law and Justice (PiS) has cited security concerns given deadly Islamist attacks in Western Europe. There are problems ascertaining the real identities of migrants, it also protests.
Underlining Poland’s own policy of supporting programmes that target the difficulties posed
by mass migration at source, the Polish foreign ministry said it had signed a deal with the Eu- ropean Investment Bank to give €50mn to help countries and territories impacted by the migra- tion crisis. The main recipients are to be Leba- non, Jordan and the West Bank. Foreign Minister Witold Waszczykowski has said that Poland is al- ready hosting migrants as in the past year alone it has awarded more than a million work permits to people from neighbouring Ukraine.