EU Needs Border Security, Not Mandatory Refugee Quotas - Czech PM

Czech Prime Minister Bohuslav Sobotka said that the European Union must find solution of the migrant crisis to which the member countries would agree.

PRAGUE (Sputnik) — The European Union should increase security measures at the Schengen Area borders instead of proposing new quota schemes to resettle migrants, Czech Prime Minister Bohuslav Sobotka said at a joint press conference with his Polish counterpart on Friday.

On Wednesday, the European Commission suggested introducing changes to the mandatory quota schemes to redirect all refugees arriving to the bloc through the member countries to aid Greece and Italy.

"The past few months have demonstrated that neither quotas nor the transfer of governments' powers to the European Commission fit," Sobotka said after the Polish-Czech intergovernmental meeting in Warsaw, as quoted by the Novinky online newspaper.

According to Sobotka, the European Union must find solution to which the member countries would agree.

"The decision on which the European Commission insists is poor, it will only deepen the existing problems," Poland's Prime Minister Beata Szydlo said.

Last year, EU members states decided to redistribute some 160,000 migrants across the bloc. Hungary, along with Poland, Slovakia and the Czech Republic, strongly opposed the decision.