JOURNALIST: Slovakia, and not just Slovakia, criticized Greece for supposedly not protecting the Schengen borders adequately. How do you see such statements? How do they impact Slovak-Greek relations?
N. KOTZIAS: We have a long history of bilateral relations. Christianity and your alphabet have a lot in common with the Greek missionaries who came to this region. We have very good relations. We also discussed them during the visit of your Foreign Minister, MiroslavLajčák, to Athens. We agreed that we want to find European solutions to European problems. Slovakia, like Greece, is a pro-European country. It is important to stress that neither of our states is responsible for the refugee crisis. We have wars in our neighbourhood, but our states aren’t responsible for those wars.
JOURNALIST: You came to Bratislava from Austria, where, in recent months, the same thing was being heard as in Slovakia: that Greece should, under certain conditions, leave the Schengen area. Is that proposal still being discussed?
N. KOTZIAS: Everyone is calmer now. Fewer such statements about Greece are being heard. But it is strange to say that we shouldn’t be in the Schengen area. As regards Austria, I dealt with the negotiations for that country in the 1990s, when it entered the EU, and the agreement for the accession of Slovakia and other countries was signed in 2003, during a Greek Presidency of the Union. Isn’t it nice to hear now, about us, that we should leave the Schengen area. We worked systematically for Slovakia to become a member of the Union.
JOURNALIST: So the proposal for Greece’s possibly leaving the Schengen area is no longer on the table?
N. KOTZIAS: Something can always be returned to the table, but if it is explained that something like this isn’t logical, then it won’t happen. I always said about the refugee crisis that protection of maritime borders is something very different from guarding land borders. We always have to bear in mind what would happen to the people who are coming. We can’t just sink their boats and let them drown. That would be illegal. I posed this question to the Council of the European Union: whether Greece should conduct itself in such a manner.
JOURNALIST: What was their reply?
N. KOTZIAS: I never got a clear answer. They would like to tell us to use our navy and to push these people back, thus violating international law. But no one wants to make such a statement. Apart from that, I argue that refugees who are coming to find a better life for their children will, in the end, find their way to Europe. But they aren’t coming to live in Slovakia or Greece. The Americans built a high-tech wall on their border with Mexico, where there is only desert and one can monitor everything. Nevertheless, people from Latin America cross the border, because they are looking for work. Anyone fleeing from war has an even greater incentive to get past the wall. I spoke with refugees and economic migrants as early as January 2015.
Everyone said it wasn’t a problem. I said this because I wanted to draw attention to this when attention was focused on Ukraine. I said that the Ukraine issue is a very important issue for the Union’s foreign policy, but I insisted that the movement of refugees would affect even our internal policy.
JOURNALIST: Following the closure of the Balkan route, there are tens of thousands of refugees in Greece. How are you handling this problem?
N. KOTZIAS: The Balkan route has closed. We have 54,000 refugees in Greece. Certain non-governmental organizations are also a problem. Many provide humanitarian assistance, but there are some that take advantage of the crisis to do business.
JOURNALIST: What do you want to do?
N. KOTZIAS: We are trying to persuade the migrants to let us move them to more modern, central accommodations. We don’t want to use force, because there are women and children. However, we have to respect the law. I always say that the Syrian’s left their country because it is not a sovereign state in the legal sense of the word. It is being bombarded by nine countries and there is the dictatorship of Bashar al-Assad. That is why they are leaving. Syria cannot defend their human rights. When they come to Greece we protect these rights, but they have to respect our laws or the country will collapse.
JOURNALIST: Are you expecting something from the EU right now?
N. KOTZIAS: The refugee crisis is not a Greek problem, it is a European problem. Athens didn’t create it, though when one follows the media, they often say that we are responsible. We need to implement all of the decisions we have made in practice. How can someone level unfair criticism at us when countries are refusing to do what they have agreed to do? We have to work together to bring peace to the Middle East. To find a way for people to stay in their homes. IhaveSyrianfriends. Theyareproudpeople. They don’t want to leave their region.
JOURNALIST: You are talking about implementation in practice. Slovakia is against the quotas.
N. KOTZIAS: You are straightforward on this issue. You state that you are against the quotas. The other 26 states (of the 28 member states, Hungary, too, is against the quotas) maintain that they are in favor of them, but they are doing little about it. I don’t like hypocrisy. It is better for Slovakia to state its opposition and fight for its view, even in court, than for someone else to say they are in favor, but without ever taking any refugees.
JOURNALIST: Are the quotas important, or do you agree that, in any case, they aren’t working?
N. KOTZIAS: We should implement the decisions we have taken. If we don’t like them, we should change them. But let’s not be hypocrites, making decisions that we don’t implement in practice and accusing Greece. I always said that the refugee crisis is a complex problem that requires a correspondingly complex solution. It was easy to lay the blame on Greece, but that isn’t a solution.
JOURNALIST: Did Greece implement the decisions adequately and quickly? The construction of the hotspots was relatively slow in coming.
N. KOTZIAS: The UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) mentioned this issue to the EU Foreign Affairs Council. As usual, to some degree he was critical of Greece, referring repeatedly to the problem in Idomeni. I reacted to this. I told him that money was made available for Idomeni and received by the UNHCR, which didn’t do its job. The money for the refugee crisis does not reach us. It is received by NGOs and international organizations and the UN. However, everyone is accusing us, even though it is these organizations that aren’t doing their job. Regarding the hotspots, they weren’t ready on schedule. But one of the reasons was that in the first buildings we used materials that the international organizations warned us were carcinogenic, and so we rebuilt them.
JOURNALIST: The arrival of refugees in Greece appears to have slowed. In this regard, how do you see the EU-Turkey agreement? Is it a more long-term solution.
N. KOTZIAS: Last week we had zero new refugees. This week, over 100. They may start coming again. We will see if Turkey honors the agreement. Ankara sets terms. Money isn’t a problem. As for doing away with visas, I’m not completely sure. I hope there isn’t disagreement over certain terms.
May 15, 2016