Implications of the European Union-Turkish Migration Agreement for the Slovak Domestic and Foreign Policy
Implications of the European Union-Turkish Migration Agreement for the Slovak Domestic and Foreign Policy

Author(s): Barbora Olejárová
Subject(s): Politics, Geography, Regional studies, International relations/trade, Policy, planning, forecast and speculation, Migration Studies
Published by: Transnational Press London
Keywords: Council Presidency; domestic policy; European Union; migration; the Slovak Republic; Turkey;
Summary/Abstract: The Slovak Republic is not located on the main migratory routes of people from the third-countries on their way to Western Europe and the state itself has never become final destination for irregular migrants or asylum seekers. Despite this fact, the crisis of migrants coming from the Middle East and sub-Saharan Africa significantly influenced both Slovak domestic and foreign policy and created unprecedented dichotomies between Slovak internal and international stance towards the issue, generating impression that Slovakia is playing both ends. Main aim of the paper is to provide evidence of how intensively can migration waves affect even those countries that are neither source countries nor transit or final destination countries for the migrants. The paper presents position of the Slovak Republic on the ongoing migration crisis and the EU solutions including the deal with Turkey and explains the dichotomy among the opinion of the general public and political leaders on one hand and the official stance country presented as the presiding country of the Council of the EU on the other hand, providing evidence that the argumentation lines of both sites were not as diverse as presented and proved to be right from the long-term perspective.

• Details
• Contents