Czech to vote against UN migration pact: minister

The Czech Republic will vote against on Wednesday the global migration pact at the UN General Assembly meeting in New York, said Foreign Minister Tomas Petricek on Monday after a government's meeting which debated its attitude toward the pact.

In November, the Czech government decided that the country will not join the pact. No Czech representatives therefore was in a UN conference in Marrakesh, Morocco, where the Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration was adopted by over 150 countries earlier this month.

The compact was agreed upon by the UN member states on July 13, 2018. It is the first-ever inter-governmentally negotiated agreement to cover all dimensions of international migration in a holistic and comprehensive manner.

The UN General Assembly will uphold the pact in a final vote on Wednesday. The vote against the pact was demanded by Czech Prime Minister Andrej Babis.

Before Monday's government meeting, Petricek said that the Czech diplomats had been instructed to abstain from the vote at the UN General Assembly. However, if the government wants the Czech Republic to vote against the pact, it will change the instruction for diplomats accordingly.

The United States, Slovakia, Hungary, Poland, Latvia, Bulgaria and Austria also rejected the global migration pact.