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Article originally published on LaPravda.ch.

Czechia – Czech Prime Minister Bohuslav Sobotka was in Salzburg, Austria last Wednesday, to meet Emmanuel Macron and the heads of governments of Slovakia and Austria to discuss the reform of the posted workers directive. The Czech Prime Minister also took advantage of his presence in the Alpine republic to give an interview to the Austrian newspaper Die Presse, where he said his country do not want to welcome more Muslims.

Speaking on the migratory crisis and recent terrorist acts in Europe, Bohuslav Sobotka stressed that there was only a small Muslim community in Czechia and that it was not radicalized. “When we look at the problems in other European countries, we in Czechia do not want more Muslims,” ​​said the Prime Minister.

“We would really like to see Europe better protect its external borders. The reception of refugees should always be within the jurisdiction of nation-states. In Europe we see too often problems with the integration of people from other cultural or religious backgrounds,” added Sobotka.

He also stressed that Czechia was helping to solve the migratory crisis by financing the Libyan coastguards and refugee camps or by sending police officers to the Balkans.

On the question of the distribution of migrants, Sobotka referred to the common position of V4 (Poland, Czechia, Hungary, Slovakia) which refuses mandatory quotas. He expressed his confidence that mandatory quotas will play no future role in European asylum policy.

According to statistics, Czechia has about 22,000 Muslims […].

Translated from French by the Visegrád Post.