The Government on Wednesday approved a motion allowing up to one hundred soldiers to help the police to maintain public order in areas near Slovakia's borders. The motion is a reaction to a notable increase in secondary migration in the country. The rate of illegal migration in Slovakia in the January-September period was 214 percent higher than in the same period of last year. Transit migration from the Western Balkans accounts for the largest share of the total number of apprehended foreigners.
Interior Minister Roman Mikulec reported on Wednesday that more migrants are currently entering Slovakia from the Czech Republic than from Hungary, adding that Bratislava needs to hold active talks on the matter with Prague. According to the minister, talks with the Czech Republic are continuing, and negotiations at expert level have been convened for next week. Mikulec is also communicating with representatives of the European Commission. "We're dealing with these matters at the EU level because we need to secure the external border of the Schengen area. If this is done, we won't need to have the kind of internal measures that we have currently," he said.
The numbers of arriving migrants change daily, noted the minister, adding that Slovakia is trying to take care of them. “They don't want to stay in Slovakia, often they don't even want to accept the help that is offered to them. They want to move on and get to Germany no matter what," Mikulec explained.
As for the tent village that is being pitched by the Interior Ministry in the town of Kuty near the border with the Czech Republic, the minister claimed that the facility will provide basic needs such as food and medical aid to migrants. Addressing the fact that the Government has allowed up to 100 soldiers to help the police to maintain public order in border areas in response to increased migration in the country, Mikulec said that he cannot tell whether more soldiers will be needed for this purpose in the future. "We'd like it to be unnecessary, so we're making all the necessary efforts to improve the situation on the external border and to ease the inflow coming from the Hungarian-Serbian border," he said, adding that EU negotiations with Serbia and Turkey also play an important role.
Source: TASR
