The Czech Republic will not accept child refugees from Greece, says Interior Minister

Prague, Jan 19 (CTK) – The Czech Republic will not accept children from Greek refugee camps since Greece will not provide the required list of 40 orphans, Interior Minister Search Results Jan Hamáček (Social Democrats, CSSD) told the Prima television station today.

Hamáček said the case was now finished.

In early September, Greece called on all EU interior ministers to accept children who stay unaccompanied by adults in its refugee camps.

Hamáček then said Greece was only trying to provoke a debate on the redistribution of refugees.

He said he could see no sense in the relocation of 17-year teenagers who are not eligible for asylum in Europe.

Hamáček called on Greece to provide the concrete list of 40 children the Czech Republic could accept.

“Greece put it clearly that it will not send us the list of 40 children and that this must be solved on an individual basis. It said small children are in some integration programmes in Greece and are not available,” he added.

Hamáček said the Czech Republic could bring Afghans and Pakistanis aged 16-18 from the Greek refugees, but this posed a security risk.

“Greeks themselves are saying that their being sent to families is unrealistic. They are warning that this would require their being sent to some special institutes,” he added.

“I will not bring 18-year old Afghans to the Czech Republic since I see it as a security risk,” Hamáček said.

He said he had information about the situation from the Czech embassy which had negotiated with Greek authorities.

“The only thing we can do is to send a mission there that will verify the data from the embassy,” Hamáček said.

Last year, Christian Democrats (KDU-CSL) MEP Michaela Sojdrova was the first to propose that the Czech Republic accept some 50 Syrian children from Greek refugee camps.

Prime Minister Andrej Babis said in reaction that the Czech Republic would not accept any migrants and that aid to refugees should be provided in their countries of origin.

According to the Medecins sans frontieres, there were 5,000 child refugees without any relatives in Greece in November.