In what may be one of the most impassioned and epic speeches against the EU migration pact in all of Europe, former Czech Prime Minister Andrej Babiš warned in Czechia’s parliament that immigration was a “cancer” that had already destroyed Western Europe but which would now slam Central and Eastern Europe as well.
The center-left Czech government of Petr Fiala helped approve the pro-migration pact, which has led to sharp criticism from the opposition led by Babiš, who says the pact will lead to a wave of immigration from the Middle East and Africa to Czechia.
“(Interior Minister) Vít Rakusan and Fiala’s migration pact is not a medicine that will cure the European Union, but a poison used for the assisted suicide of Europe and its culture. The rejection of migrants from a completely different cultural environment is not a manifestation of a lack of solidarity, but an instinct for self-preservation,” said Babiš.
He further warned that migrant quotas are coming to Czechia, which will force the country to accept thousands of newcomers.
“The migration pact was negotiated and pushed through by the Fiala government during the Czech EU Presidency and passed through the European Parliament last week. The vote on this absolutely insane, monstrous agreement, which contains hidden refugee quotas and obliges the Czech Republic to accept migrants from Africa and the Middle East exactly as Brussels envisages, could change our country beyond recognition in a few years. Without any exaggeration, Fiala and Rakusan have traded our security, culture and way of life for uncontrolled migration, an explosion of crime and the disintegration of our society, just as is happening in many countries in Western Europe today.
I’m going to say it bluntly here and I’m not afraid of it. Mass illegal migration of people with a completely different culture, customs and mentality is a cancer that is destroying European society. If we do not start doing something about this insidious disease, in a few years the Czech Republic may find itself in the same situation as France, Germany, the Netherlands, Britain, Italy, or Sweden.”
The former Czech prime minister — who leads the ANO party, which sits at the top of the polls — went so far as to say that Western Europe has been lost, but now with the introduction of the EU migration pact, Central and Eastern Europe could be the next to succumb to mass immigration.
“This must be clear to anyone who sees what is happening in Western European cities. Unfortunately, I think it is too late to save Western Europe. In the Czech Republic and other countries of Central and Eastern Europe, however, that situation is still avoidable. Even if it’s ‘5 minutes to midnight,’ we still have time and the opportunity to fight illegal migration. That first step is to reject the progressive open border ‘welcomers,’ eco-fanatics and social engineers who want to forcefully ‘improve our world’ and elect people who will fiercely defend our national interests and oppose illegal migration in the European Parliament elections.”
The speech, delivered on April 18 during a meeting of the Chamber of Deputies, which is the lower house of the Czech Parliament, will likely go down as one of the most impassioned speeches in defiance of the EU migration pact in the history of Czechia, if not all of Europe.
Czechs are notoriously anti-immigration, leaving the current government scrambling to come up with excuses why it backed the EU migration pact, which could bring an estimated 75 million migrants to Europe and which French National Rally parliamentary leader Marine Le Pen has described as the “suicide of Europe.”
Czech Interior Minister Vít Rakusan fell back on the “principle of solidarity” and admitted that no one is claiming that the migration agreement will actually stop illegal migration. Instead, he said it will provide an opportunity to better manage the situation, better protect the external Schengen borders and speed up deportations.
“The agreement does not include mandatory relocations, popularly known as quotas,” the interior minister claimed
However, the interior minister’s claim is highly misleading, as the migration pact clearly indicates that member states will be allocated migrants, which they can then only deny if they are willing to pay a fine.
Babiš came close to calling the ruling Czech government and its coalition parties traitors who are selling out to moneyed pro-immigration interests.
“They do not want to get into the European Parliament to work and defend Czech national interests, but the interests of their wallets. They will not hesitate to throw their own country into the trough of Brussels. These people are capable of lying outright with a straight face,” said Babiš.
The government responded to criticisms by saying it believes that “rational” solutions are needed, rather than the “fear-mongering” from the opposition. Vít Rakusan said that there is no real reason to fear migration in the Czech Republic, where he claimed only 111 foreigners are currently staying in reception centers.
Babiš shot back against claims that there were not many migrants in Czechia, saying: “There are no migrants here. That is an absolutely outrageous statement.
“For God’s sake, on what planet, in what solar system, in what galaxy, in what universe, in what dimension, does this person live, whose only interest is to grab any euro credit for himself, so that he can run out of money and spend public money on stupid things?”
He then goes on to list major crimes committed by migrants and a range of statistics that support his position that mass immigration will slam Czechia.
“So those examples of unmanaged migration. Since 2015, at least 8,000 women have been victims of sexual assault by migrants in Germany. Officially, because, according to statistics, 85 percent of women who are assaulted do not report sexual violence at all.
In addition, immigrants, especially Syrians, Afghans and Pakistanis, are four times more likely to commit sexual assaults in proportion to their representation in the German population, and even five times more likely to commit rape. Sweden has faced a similar epidemic of violence against women for years, where 60 percent of perpetrators of rapes are of migrant origin. It’s not just sexual violence, street flghts, wars, foreign gangs or murder on the streets of French, British, German, Italian and Swedish cities that is such a daily occurrence.”
Rakusan, however, said the migration pact does not specify the amount that a member state that does not accept migrants should pay. He said the Czech proposal to consider countries that have taken in large numbers of Ukrainian refugees was included in the pact. So far, the Czech Republic has taken in almost 600,000 Ukrainian refugees, of whom some 350,000 remain in the country. The Czech government has therefore argued that the Czechs should neither take in migrants nor pay other countries to do so.
However, former Czech Prime Minister Andrej Babiš said that the center-left Fiala government was lying when it claimed that the convention did not include the mandatory distribution of migrants from Africa and the Middle East to the Czech Republic, among other countries.
Babiš has long been an outspoken critic of the government’s move to back the migration pact, already calling it last year “an incredible betrayal, an incredible failure of our government, which is servile to Brussels.
