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Slovakia's premier says EU will either resolve refugee crisis or lose unity

Tuesday, 09 February 2016 2:07 PM [ Last Update: Tuesday, 09 February 2016 2:10 PM ]

Robert Fico, the prime minister of Slovakia

The prime minister of Slovakia says the European Union will either resolve its refugee crisis or lose its unity.

Robert Fico wrote in an article published in business daily Hospodarske Noviny on Tuesday, “2016 will be the year when the EU will either bring the migration crisis under control or collapse.”

Fico, who has made tackling the flow of refugees the main platform of his campaign for Slovakia’s March 5 parliamentary elections, wrote, “To overlook growing tension, nervousness and fear among people of the fact that EU does not have a real solution to the migration crisis while the migration wave continues ... could have catastrophic consequences.”

Fico has taken a hardliner stance against refugees seeking asylum in the EU, arguing in favor of securing the EU borders to stop the inflow of migrants.

The Slovakian administration has also filed a lawsuit against an EU decision to redistribute 160,000 asylum seekers among EU member states.

The photo shows child refugees looking out of the window from a train headed toward Serbia at the border between Greece and Macedonia, February 8, 2016. (AFP)

Fico has linked the influx of migrants into the bloc to the November 2015 terrorist attacks in Paris, France, and violence on New Year's Eve in Cologne, Germany. Multiculturalism is “a fiction,” the Slovakian premier stated.

His administration’s stance on immigration resonates with voters in Slovakia, a Catholic country of 5.4 million with a largely homogeneous society and next to no experience of accommodating refugees.

Fico's statements come ahead of next week's meeting of the Visegrad group of central European countries and an EU summit that has been organized to address the refugee crisis.

The Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary and Poland have together taken a tough stance on asylum-seekers and been at odds with western EU neighbors in dealing with an influx of refugees that topped 1 million last year.

Many blame Western policies in the Middle East, including support for militants wreaking havoc in the region, for the current refugee crisis.

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