Will the Czech Republic become a "country of illegal immigrants" now that EU ministers "have approved" a reform of EU's migration and asylum regulations? No, that's not true: the new migration pact is intended to streamline border procedures for asylum seekers and assess whether their claims are justified more quickly. It does not mean that migrants will be automatically allowed to enter the EU. In addition, the agreement recently reached by member states may not be the final text, as it still has to be discussed with the European Parliament.
The claim appeared in a video (archived here), published on TikTok on June 9, 2023 under the title, in Czech: "Fialova vláda chce udělat z ČR zemi immigrantů a včera odsouhlasila závazek povinné solidarity se zeměmi s vysokými počty ilegálních migrantů." Translated into English by Lead Stories staff, it reads: "Fiala's government wants to turn the Czech Republic into a country of immigrants and yesterday approved mandatory solidarity for countries with large numbers of illegal migrants."
It opened:
Listen to this, Fiala's pro-Brussels government yesterday approved a new reform of the EU migration policy, which means that the country will be obliged to accept illegal migrants coming to Europe or pay high financial amounts to other European countries that accept these illegal migrants from African or Islamic states.
This is what the post looked like on TikTok at the time of writing:
(Source: TikTok screenshot taken on Thu Jun 15 09:39:06 2023 UTC)
The person speaking in the video is Tomio Okamura, the leader of one of the opposition parties in the Czech Parliament, Freedom and Direct Democracy (SPD). The European Union's migration and asylum reform rules, on which EU interior ministers finally reached an agreement in Luxembourg on June 8, 2023, give member states more tools to assess asylum seekers' claims more quickly at border facilities. The New Pact on Migration and Asylum introduces "mandatory border procedures to quickly assess whether applications are unfounded or inadmissible at the EU's external borders. Persons subject to the asylum border procedure will not be authorized to enter the territory of the member state," the EU Council clarified in a statement after the meeting.
The EU ministers also backed a so-called solidarity mechanism to share responsibilities among countries. States can either take in people who need to be relocated or pay money into a common fund. A minimum of 30,000 people per year would be redistributed among member states.
The agreement has been reached after a long and hard process, but it still has to be negotiated with the European Parliament, with the goal of wrapping up the legislation before next year's EU elections. The president of the European Parliament Roberta Metsola tweeted that lawmakers are ready to start talks immediately.
The Czech Republic is among the EU states that have taken in the most Ukrainian refugees since the start of the Russian agression in 2022. Czech Interior Minister Vít Rakušan repeatedly told the press that the Czech Republic would be temporarily exempted from paying any financial compensation for not taking in more asylum seekers, as also posted on the Czech Ministry of Interior's website and Twitter by Rakušan on June 8, 2023.
A EU official, contacted by Lead Stories on June 16, 2023, explained by email that the text upon which the member states reached an agreement may not be the final one, adding that "the asylum and migration management regulation needs to be adopted first." Lead Stories also reached out by email on June 16, 2023, to a spokesperson for the European Commission to have more details on the exemption regarding the financial contribution announced by Minister Rakušan and will update the article should we receive a response.
