Economy 31 October 2023, 9:23am

Robert Fico says Slovakia will hold a show of force on the Hungarian border

MTI

Slovakia is launching a show of force for illegal immigrants and deploying a large police force to control the Slovak-Hungarian green border, Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico announced at a press conference with Interior Minister Matus Sutaj Estok and Foreign Minister Juraj Blanár at the Čunovo -Rajka motorway crossing on Monday evening.

The police operation to screen out illegal migration started on Monday evening. The Slovak Prime Minister, who personally attended the launch of the announced police operation with two of his ministers, indicated in the afternoon that a significant force was being deployed to curb illegal migration.

At the press conference, Robert Fico pointed out that more than 46,000 illegal migrants have entered the country since the beginning of this year, many times more than before, and that something must be done about the situation, as according to existing information, illegal migration is expected to increase in the short term.

Regarding the reinforcement of the police presence, the Slovak PM said that the current police operation will be a demonstration of force at the green border, using all possible technical means to show that the situation can be managed.

Slovakia is ready to tackle illegal migration,

stated Fico. He added that they are working with the Hungarian authorities to target illegal migrants and are planning a visit to Hungary in the near future to discuss future management of the situation and cooperation.

Interior Minister Matus Sutaj Estok also stressed the importance of cooperation with the Hungarian authorities, and said that the current operation is a clear signal to illegal migrants and people smugglers that the new government is putting an end to the period when they were free to enter the country.

He pointed out that 5,000 illegal migrants entered the country in 2022 and almost ten times that number so far this year, a dangerous increase, especially given that recent information and events on the Balkan migration route show a link between people smugglers and some terrorist groups.

Foreign Minister Juraj Blanár stressed that the Schengen area is at risk and that Hungary, which has already invested a lot in tackling the problem, cannot be left to deal with the situation on its own.

Robert Fico was appointed Slovakia's prime minister last Wednesday (25 October) for the fourth time, after pledging in his election campaign to end military support for Ukraine and criticising sanctions on Russia, Reuters reported.

President Zuzana Caputova appointed Fico and his cabinet after his SMER-SSD party won the 30 September election and formed a coalition with the centre-left HLAS and nationalist SNS parties.

Fico quit as prime minister in 2018 amid mass public protests against corruption after the murder of investigative journalist Jan Kuciak and his fiancée, Martina Kusnirova.

Foreign Policy said in mid-October that Fico is not as pro-Russian as many observers fear and that he "is not the next Viktor Orbán". Ringing quite a few bells for those knowing Prime Minister Viktor Orbán's modus operandi it described the image of Smer-SD as "a hermetic and highly opaque clique that grabbed control of major institutions in the country, including in justice and police, rewarded loyalists by distributing public assets, and was influenced from behind the scenes by shady businessmen (some with ties to organized crime) who operated with impunity."

The paper pointed that that this is a recipe that both Orbán and Polish ruling party head Jaroslaw Kaczynski have long been successfully implementing on a much larger scale. "For instance, Fico never attempted to turn the public broadcaster into a hard-line propaganda mouthpiece or use it to discredit opponents, as his two neighbors have. Nor did he try to create a homogenous nationalist-ideological umbrella for his appetite for power. Nor did he make the West a favorite attack target, being a rather quiet but loyal EU and NATO member. In a nutshell, the main headache for Slovakia under Fico was corruption and clientelism, not authoritarianism."

However, FP said that Fico's "attitude toward Russia is also far more complex than Orbán’s indiscriminate support. Many international outlets tend to label Fico as “pro-Russian,” but, as usual, they have looked at rhetoric and symbolic gestures. And these rarely match Fico’s deeds."