Continuing on from a series of meetings across Europe in recent weeks, Luxembourg Minister of Foreign and European Affairs, Minister of Immigration and Asylum, Jean Asselborn, was in Prague on Monday 21 September 2015 to conduct a working meeting with his Hungarian, Polish, Czech, Slovakian and Latvian counterparts as part of the Visegrad Group (V4).
Discussions between the Foreign Ministers focused on preparations ahead of the extraordinary Justice and Home Affairs (JHA) Council to be held later today under the Luxembourg Presidency of the Council of the EU. This meeting, at which representatives of Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway and Sweden are also due to be in attendance, will address the proposal from the European Commission concerning the provisional mechanism for the relocation from Italy, Greece and Hungary to across the Member States of 120,000 people seeking international protection.
"All the points where there are differences were on the table," commented Minister Asselborn following the V4 meeting. "We talked openly about all the issues, we anaylsed and understood a good number of things. There are still questions that we need to work on [...] tomorrow will be an important day in Brussels. We all know that we must find a common European solution. We will do everything to ensure that tomorrow's meeting will lead to concrete and common conclusions".
Photo by MAEE (Jean Asselborn (centre, left) with his counterparts from V4 Group (Hungary, Poland, Czech Republic, Slovakia) and Latvia)
