According to Czech Prime Minister Petr Fiala, the European Union must fundamentally change its migrant return policy, strengthen protections on its external border, and cooperate more with third countries. The Prime Minister made the comments to journalists yesterday during a summit of EU leaders in Brussels, where migration is one of the main topics.
Fiala met several other EU prime ministers on the sidelines of the European Council, who he said shared his view and wanted to “improve migration and asylum policy.”
The meeting was hosted by Italy, Denmark and the Netherlands, and in addition to the Czech Republic, representatives from Estonia, Cyprus, Slovakia, Malta, Austria, Poland and Hungary were present. The head of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, was also at the meeting.
According to Fiala, the countries that met yesterday morning want to “change migration policy, they are not satisfied with it, they see that migration is becoming a bigger and bigger problem in the EU, which is growing over our heads.”
“I see a big shift in this because we are talking about things that were taboo not long ago,” said Fiala. “For example, it is about improving the return policy, which is not working. The number of those who should be deported and are actually deported is around 20%, and this needs to be fundamentally changed.”
Fiala said that checks inside the Schengen area, which are currently in place, are not the solution. “It goes against the spirit of European integration and against what our citizens want from a common Europe,” the prime minister said. The participation of the European Commission chief in yesterday’s meeting is a good signal that things are moving forward, he said.
“We will also contribute to this by the fact that one of the commissioners in charge of cooperation with third countries will be the new Czech Commissioner for Migration and the Mediterranean, Jozef Sikela,” he added. Sikela, the Czech Commissioner-designate, would be in charge of international partnership issues.
Representatives of all the countries that met this morning agreed that “we must be bolder and faster in our responses,” Fiala said.
“We must not allow a repeat of the European response to the migration wave of the middle of the last decade, that is unacceptable,” he added.
In his view, it is necessary to protect the external border, cooperate much more closely with third countries, and to look for innovative solutions, such as return centres in third countries.
EU leaders have already addressed Russian aggression in Ukraine at the summit, being briefed on Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s victory plan.
They are now debating the situation in the Middle East, but perhaps the most stormy discussion is expected to be on migration, as the situation in many European countries has changed in recent months. Germany has introduced controls at its land borders with all neighbouring countries, the Netherlands and Hungary want a permanent exemption from EU rules on migration and asylum, and Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk has announced that Poland is going to suspend the right to asylum for certain groups of newcomers because of the situation on the Polish-Belarusian border.
