Central European inside ministers conform to step up battle in opposition to unlawful migration at EU borders
SZEGED, Hungary — Interior ministers from six European Union nations on Monday stated their nations had agreed to step up efforts to guard the bloc from unlawful immigration and goal teams of human smugglers that function on its borders.
The ministers from the V4 group of Central European nations — together with the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia — have been joined by counterparts from Austria and Germany for a summit within the southern Hungarian metropolis of Szeged, 5 miles from the bloc’s border with Serbia.
Some EU governments fear that rising strain from the so-called Balkan migration route, which leads from Serbia into Hungary, requires a harder response from nations within the area.
The inside minister of the Czech Republic, Vit Rakusan, who organized the summit, stated migration is a “shared challenge” for Europe, and that options should concentrate on stopping migrants from getting into the bloc illegally.
“We all are on the same migration route. We share borders, and the situation on the external border of the EU affects all of us,” he stated. He didn’t give particulars on how they might goal smugglers.
Rakusan asserted that current choices by quite a few European governments to reintroduce inner border checks throughout the visa-free Schengen zone have been unsustainable, and that exterior border safety can be the main target of cooperation between the six governments going ahead.
“We all want to have the Schengen area alive,” he stated. “We all know that controls and checks on the internal borders, it isn’t the right solution.”
Around 13 of the EU‘s 27 member countries have reintroduced internal border checks with their neighbors in recent months, a deviation from the normal border-free travel enjoyed in the Schengen zone.
Slovakia last month resumed checks at its border with Hungary to reduce a growing number of migrants entering the country, after neighbors Austria, the Czech Republic and Poland introduced controls at their own borders with Slovakia.
Part of what led to the change was the proliferation of violence in northern Serbia in recent months. Gun battles have become common along the border with Hungary where migrants have gathered looking for ways to cross into the EU with the help of smugglers.
Hundreds of Serbian officers were dispatched in late October into the area near the border. They detained several people after a shooting between migrants killed three people and injured one.
At the summit on Monday, Hungarian Interior Minister Sandor Pinter said he and his counterparts would discuss a common EU policy on immigration and asylum at a meeting in Brussels next week. He said his country is not willing to compromise on a proposal that would distribute asylum seekers across the EU to reduce the burden on countries most affected by migration.
“Hungary cannot accept the mandatory nature of relocation,” Pinter said. “This is a question of sovereignty for Hungary.”
The ministers were later scheduled to visit Hungary’s electrified border fence, which the nationalist authorities erected in 2015 after over 1 million migrants entered the EU after fleeing struggle and poverty within the Middle East and Africa.
