Foreign Minister Lajčák: border checks are not the way to go

After a regular meeting of the Cabinet on Wednesday, Foreign and European Affairs Minister Miroslav Lajčák stated that European migration policy has begun to record a significant change lately. "The reality is starting to be grasped even by those politicians who were refusing to see it before," Lajčák said. The chief of Slovak diplomacy considers it crucial for the EU to have a joint strategy to the migration crisis anchored in reality. Lajčák pointed to Tuesday's (January 19) statements of European Council President Donald Tusk, who warned of the potential disintegration of the Schengen area if the current migration crisis isn't tackled within two months. "The EU will fail as a political project if it cannot control its external borders properly," said Tusk. Lajčák estimated that external Schengen borders could be likely secured no sooner than June and that by then further hundreds of thousands of migrants could have entered the EU. "We're also witnessing a number of individual EU countries leaning towards border checks. But that's not the way to go. What we need is a pan-European solution that is neither idealistic nor bureaucratic; but rather enforceable and sustainable," stressed Lajčák.