During a press conference following the meeting, Mikl-Leitner said that joint border patrols would watch the borders for the trespassing of illegal migrants and counter criminal activity in border regions.
According to Chovanec, undocumented immigrants in the Czech Republic are now counted in the thousands, while neighboring Austria is dealing with numbers in the tens of thousands.
The Czech minister stated that Prague was ready to help Budapest counter undocumented immigrants on Hungary’s southern border, an area reportedly crossed by over 80,000 refugees in 2015 alone, according to the minister.
Europe is beset by a major migrant crisis as thousands of people flee conflict-torn countries in North Africa, the Middle East, and Central and South Asia. According to the UN data, 137,000 refugees crossed the Mediterranean Sea for Europe in the first six months of 2015. Some 2000 are estimated to have perished in the attempt.
