Prague to Host Central Europe Summit on Refugees

Praha, 16 Rabi’ul Akhir 1437/27 January 2016 (MINA) – The Czech Republic has invited fellow EU members Hungary, Poland and Slovakia to a special summit on migration next month as the bloc grapples with a record refugee crisis, the Czech prime minister said Tuesday on Twitter.

“The Czech Republic will call an extraordinary summit of the Visegrad-four countries for February 15,” Premier Bohuslav Sobotka said, specifying that the refugee crisis would top the agenda.

His spokesman was not immediately available to give details, Worldbulletin quoted by Mi’raj Islamic News Agency (MINA) as reporting.

The Czech Republic holds the rotating presidency of the so-called Visegrad group, which brings together four central European ex-communist countries.

All four have rejected the EU’s plan for quotas to distribute refugees across the continent.

They have instead insisted on tighter border control for the 26-member passport-free Schengen zone and other steps that would reduce the influx of refugees into Europe.

More than one million people reached Europe in 2015, most of them refugees fleeing war and violence in Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria, according to the United Nations refugee agency.

But few asylum-seekers have chosen to stay in the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Poland, while Hungary last year built a fence to deflect a refugee wave heading from the Balkans westwards to wealthier EU members such as Germany. (T/P011/R03)

Mi’raj Islamic News Agency (MINA)