The Czech Republic won’t sign the United Nationals Global Compact For Migration.
The Deputy-Prime Minister Richard Brabec stated during a press conference that the document does little to differentiate between legal and illegal migration. The decision follows a trend of scepticism toward mass migration by countries in Central Eastern Europe belonging to the Visegrad Group and the Three Seas Initiative.
The Czech Republic has announced that the country will not join the UN Compact for Migration which is to be signed by a vast majority of UN member states next month in the city of Marrakech in Morocco. Opposition to the UN compact is growing in many countries. Street protests have recently been organized in Germany but the country’s leadership remains determined to sign the document.
The decision was announced by the Deputy Prime Minister of the Czech Republic at a press conference following a vote in the Cabinet. Earlier, the US, Hungary, Austria and Bulgaria have declared that they will sign the document. The Polish government has indicated that it won’t put pen to paper either and is expected to make a decision in the coming days. Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki announced that the government is leaning toward not signing the document during a joint press conference with German Chancellor Angela Merkel on November 2nd following the conclusion of the Polish-German Intergovernmental Consultations in Warsaw.
On Monday, the President of the European Commission, Jean-Claude Juncker, criticized the countries which are withdrawing from the compact.
„If the two or three countries in doubt of the U.N. migration pact had read it, they would have remained inside.” -Jean-Claude Juncker
The Czech government argues, just as the other reluctant countries, that the compact doesn’t make enough of a distinction between legal and illegal immigration and that the document in general is encouraging mass migration flows across the world.