Czech President Milos Zeman on Monday echoed the Visegrad group of countries’ tough stance on the refugee crisis and the related migrant furor that has dominated European press headlines over much of 2016, essentially describing an “Australian solution” whereby irregular migrants reaching Europe are hosted on uninhabited Greek isles and “empty spaces” in North Africa.
Although his country is not yet a Eurozone member, Zeman also said the creation of “hot spots” on isolated Greek islets could come with a commensurate reduction in Greece’s foreign debt.
In a story circulated by FT, Zeman is quoted as saying that “I am for deportation of all economic migrants… Of course I respect the cruelty of civil war in Syria, Iraq, and so on. But we do not speak about those people, we speak about economic migrants.”
He also stressed that since “less than one-third” of the one million-plus people that illegally entered the EU were refugees, this would mean deporting hundreds of thousands of third country nationals. “If they go in, they may go out,” he said.
