Prague, Sept 19 (CTK) – Global pacts on refugees and migration are neither legally binding nor enforceable, Czech acting foreign minister Jan Hamacek (Social Democrats, CSSD) told the Chamber of Deputies today.
No new duties or obligations arise from them for the Czech Republic, Hamacek, the Social Democrat leader who is also the interior minister, said.
“This is not any international agreement that can be enforced by law,” Hamacek said.
The pacts which react to mass movements of migrants and refugees are just political declarations. It is not true that the pact about migration defines it as a fundamental human right, he added.
The Chamber of Deputies debate on the pact started on the proposal of deputy Zdenek Ondracek (Communists, KSCM).
He asked at the beginning why the Czech Republic does not reject the documents if they are unbinding and political.
“Why do we not put it clearly that we are not interested in the two global pacts?” Ondracek said.
The pacts are not devised to reduce migration. If anything, they fuel it, he added.
He said if the U.N. member countries accept the migration pacts, this will bind them to ratify them on the national level, too, whereby they will become a binding part of national legal orders.
The migration agreement, on which over 190 United Nations countries agreed in July, wants to support safe, regulated and legal migration and to reduce people smuggling and trafficking.
The pact is to be passed in Morocco in December.
The USA withdrew from the talks on the pact last year, arguing that it is incompatible with Washington’s migration policy.
Hungary, too, left the talks in July, saying it absolutely ran counter to its security interests.
Tomio Okamura, the leader of the Czech anti-EU Freedom and Direct Democracy (SPD), said the pact posed a danger both to the Czech Republic and Europe.
The Czech Republic should behave in the same way as the USA and Hungary because the documents contradict its interests, he added.
The lower house will vote about a resolution he proposed in this spirit.