Slovak Interior Minister Matúš Šutaj Eštok will travel to Brussels on Monday for a meeting of EU interior ministers, declaring that he is going with a clear and firm mandate to reject the European Union’s Migration and Asylum Pact.
“We reject illegal migration, we reject mandatory relocations, we promote border protection, and we insist on the sovereign right to decide who will live on our territory,” Šutaj Eštok said in a video posted on social media, arguing that Slovakia supports a “safe and functioning Europe” but will not accept decisions imposed from Brussels.
“I reject accepting people we know nothing about, who do not recognize our traditions or values, and who may pose a security risk to Slovakia,” he added, as cited by the TASR news agency.
The minister insisted that Slovakia has already shown substantial solidarity, pointing to the arrival of hundreds of thousands of people from Ukraine since 2022. He noted that Slovakia continues to register dozens of new applications for temporary refuge each day. “This is real solidarity,” he said, contrasting it with what he described as “artificially created mandatory mechanisms that Brussels wants to impose on us.”
In the Facebook video, Šutaj Eštok repeated his position in even sharper terms: “Slovakia will not let itself be dictated to. After my inauguration, we stopped illegal immigration at the border. We have shown that the state knows how to protect its citizens. I am going to Brussels to defend Slovakia’s sovereignty, and I reject the meaningless Migration and Asylum Pact.”
The stance comes as the European Commission set out last month how the new pact will operate in practice. In its first Annual Migration Management Cycle report, the Commission said several EU states — including Bulgaria, Czechia, Estonia, Croatia, Austria, and Poland — could apply for partial or full reductions in their required solidarity contributions in 2026 due to sustained migratory pressure. Those contributions will form part of the pact’s Solidarity Pool, which obliges member states either to relocate asylum seekers from countries under strain or pay a financial sum per migrant they refuse.
Greece, Cyprus, Spain, and Italy were formally identified as being under “migratory pressure,” while Belgium, Germany, France, Ireland, the Netherlands, and others were deemed “at risk” and will receive priority access to the EU’s migration support tools. These include funding for new border-security technologies such as drones and anti-drone systems.
Neither Slovakia nor Hungary appeared among the countries listed for possible deductions or additional support. Budapest has sharply criticized the Commission for failing to acknowledge its role in securing the EU’s external border with Serbia. The Hungarian government says it has intercepted 11,400 illegal crossings this year, up from 9,300 last year. Chief Security Advisor György Bakondi told broadcaster M1 in October that “there are no illegal migrants in Hungary because the government made the right decision in 2015 to close the border,” adding that Hungary’s measures protect not only its own citizens but the wider EU.
Czechia is also fundamentally against the pact. Andrej Babiš, widely expected to become the next prime minister, campaigned on rejecting it entirely. He described it as “the greatest betrayal of Czechia in modern history,” warning that it would undermine national control over migration.
