Babis Rejects Proposed EU Migrant Compensations

Andrej Babis

Prague, June 4 (CTK) – Czech Prime Minister Andrej Babis is against the introduction of an EU system of compensations that the member countries which do not accept migrants would provide to others, he said today about the idea recently mentioned by German Chancellor Angela Merkel.

 

“We do not want to compensate for it. Why should we compensate for it by a contribution. We have declared it clearly that it is our citizens and our firms that would be deciding on who would work or live here (in the Czech Republic),” Babis said.

 

Merkel told the Sunday issue of the German daily Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung that the EU should create a flexible asylum system to which each country would contribute according to its own decision but comparably with other countries. This means that the countries which would refuse to accept migrants would compensate it another way. She wants to find a solution that will be acceptable for all the member states, she told the paper.

 

Babis said the migrants need to be stopped before they get to Europe. “We must stop the migration outside the European continent and help those people in Africa and Syria. We have slept it away, European diplomacy has done absolutely nothing within Syria,” he said.

 

He said the networks of migrant smugglers who made a profitable business of transporting migrants to Europe must be liquidated.

 

Babis said he believes Frontex, the European border and coast guard agency, would not suffice to stop the migrants. “The idea that Frontex would guard everything is not realistic from the long-term perspective. Member states must guard it,” he said.