Poland, the Czech Republic and Austria have announced the introduction of temporary controls at their borders with Slovakia from tonight to curb illegal immigration.

“From midnight, we will re-introduce control on the border with Slovakia,” Polish Interior Minister Mariusz Kaminski announced, AFP, Reuters and Agerpres agencies reported.

In “coordination with its neighbors,” the Czech Republic will do the same, the Czech Interior Ministry said at the time. “The number of illegal migrants in the European Union is starting to grow again. We take this very seriously,” said Prime Minister of the Czech Republic Petr Fiala on the X platform (formerly Twitter).

Subsequently, Austria, where the number of migrant arrivals has been falling since the beginning of the year, announced on Tuesday afternoon the consolidation of already existing controls, this time directly at the border rather than in the surrounding areas, at 11 different posts.

“We need effective control before traffickers change their route,” said Austrian Interior Minister Gerhard Karner.

In the three countries, the first stage of the inspection will last ten days.

“It creates a cascade effect”

Slovakia’s acting prime minister, Ludovit Odor, promised that his country would respond on Wednesday. In a statement quoted by Reuters, he stressed that “migration requires a European solution at the external borders” because “when a country starts to protect its border more, a cascade effect is created, we all pay for it, and the result will be very unclear.”

The member states of the European Union have not yet agreed on a key text from the reform of the European Pact on Migration and Asylum, which allows, in particular, to extend the period of detention of migrants at the external borders of the community bloc.

This year Slovakia recorded an increase in the number of migrants, most of whom arrived from Serbia via Hungary. In the first eight months of this year, Slovakia detected around 24,500 migrants illegally entering its territory, compared with 10,900 in all of 2022 and just a few hundred in 2021, according to Slovak police.

The newly appointed Prime Minister of Slovakia: “We will have to resort to force”

Robert Fico, whose Smer-SD party won Slovakia’s parliamentary elections on Saturday and was appointed prime minister next Monday, promised to immediately introduce border controls with Hungary. “We will have to resort to a forceful solution to the problem of migrants,” he said.

Last week, Germany decided to tighten border controls with Poland and the Czech Republic in the context of an increase in the number of illegal entries into its territory.

All these countries are members of the EU and Schengen. A measure to reintroduce border controls in the Schengen area is permitted only in exceptional circumstances and must be notified to the European Commission prior to its implementation.

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