Slovakia will send additional forces to the border with Hungary to carry out an action to combat illegal migration, Prime Minister of the Republic Robert Fico said on Monday.
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In early September, Slovakia decided to send up to 500 military personnel to assist police in the fight against illegal migration on the border with Hungary, and later the republic also introduced border controls on the Slovak-Hungarian border until November 3.
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An emergency was declared in several cities in Slovakia due to the accumulation of illegal immigrants.
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“I welcomed the fact that the Ministry of Internal Affairs has chosen as one of its priorities the creation of barriers to illegal migration. Therefore, I also supported the news that this evening it will be possible to see the mobilization of both police and military personnel for the action, this is not a training, not an exercise, the Ministry of Internal Affairs together with the Armed Forces, he is going to attract quite large volumes of manpower and equipment to almost the entire “green border” with Hungary,” Fico told reporters after a meeting with the head of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the republic.
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He noted that until illegal migration is brought under control, there is a risk that people associated with terrorist structures may enter Slovakia.
Poland, the Czech Republic and Austria previously temporarily resumed border controls on their borders with Slovakia due to a sharp increase in the number of illegal migrants on the so-called “Balkan route” leading through the Balkan states to Western European countries.
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The situation with migrants worsened in Slovakia at the beginning of September; residents of border settlements complained that illegal immigrants, who were entering the country in dozens from Hungary, were entering the gardens of local residents in search of food. The opposition called for closing the border with Hungary, but now former Slovak Prime Minister Ludovit Odor insisted that this would not help because the main problem was the situation on the Hungarian-Serbian border. Illegal immigrants enter Hungary from Serbia and are sent in transit through Slovakia to other European countries, in particular Germany and Austria, where they seek asylum. Most of the migrants are citizens of Syria, Slovakian police previously reported.
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In 2022, the Czech Republic has already introduced border controls on the border with Slovakia for three months in order to combat growing illegal migration.
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According to the Czech Ministry of Internal Affairs, during this time almost 9.3 thousand citizens of third countries were detained who were trying to illegally enter the Czech Republic and further into Western European countries. The number of detained illegal migrants in Slovakia in 2022 compared to 2021 increased 8 times and amounted to more than 11.2 thousand people who intended to get to Western Europe along the same “Balkan route”.
