The Czech government has voted against signing the UN accord, which sets guidelines for handling migration worldwide.
"The Czech Republic has long favoured the principle of separating legal and illegal migration. That is what the Czech Republic's and other European countries' suggestions aimed for. The final text does not reflect those proposals," Deputy Prime Minister Richard Brabec said, as cited by the Associated Press.
The country’s leadership had criticized the agreement earlier. President Milos Zeman said that the lack of difference between legal and illegal migration in the pact is “something that can be easily abused in practice,” while Prime Minister Andrej Babis stated that he doesn’t like it, as the accord is “not clearly interpreted.”
The Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration is expected to be adopted at Intergovernmental Conference 2018, which will be held in Morocco on December 10-11. The GCM represents the global community’s attempt to establish a common approach to dealing with international migration and includes 23 objectives to bring the management of human migration in line.
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Washington withdrew from the talks on the deal in 2017. Hungary, Austria and Bulgaria have also announced their plans to leave the deal, while Poland's Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki said Warsaw was likely to abandon the agreement, too.
The European Union has been experiencing a migration crisis since 2015 due to an influx of thousands of people fleeing crises in the Middle East and North Africa.
The countries of the Visegrad Group: the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia, have taken a tough stance on accepting refugees, which evoked criticism from EU officials in Brussels and many European politicians.
