Czechia, Slovakia want V4 summit with Germany, Austria to talk border controls

Germany and Austria should be invited to the upcoming Visegrad Group summit at the end of November to discuss internal border controls and irregular migration, Czech Interior Minister Vít Rakušan (STAN) and his newly appointed Slovak counterpart Matúš Šutaj Eštok (HLAS) agreed in Prague on Thursday.

Czechia and Slovakia have introduced random checks on their southern and eastern borders to curb the flow of illegal migrants, which Šutaj Eštok said had risen from 6,000 in 2022 to 46,000 in his country this year.

Rakušan, for his part, praised cooperation between the Czech and Slovak police forces but stressed the need for a broader European solution.

To this end, he suggested inviting Germany and Austria to the next Visegrad Group summit to debate the matter on a broader platform – an idea Slovakia supports.

Talking about addressing the migration situation at the EU level, the two ministers agreed on the need for a common solution to irregular migration to the EU and argued that reform is needed for what they said is a widely dysfunctional EU asylum and migration system.

One of the most important steps will be introducing a so-called mandatory border procedure, which should lead to better protection of the EU’s borders against irregular migration and speed up their return – a point included in the proposal for a New Pact on Migration and Asylum.

The ministers also discussed police cooperation between the two countries, with Rakušan stressing that it must continue.

“We have to finalise the new agreement on police cooperation, which gives a new quality, a new framework to the traditionally good cooperation,” he said.

(Ondřej Plevák | Euractiv.cz)

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