BRATISLAVA, March 24 (Xinhua) -- Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico said Friday that EU needs Turkey to help maintain the shutdown of the Balkans migration route.
"Looking at the previous period, we can see that only 2 percent of migrants are now getting to Europe via the Balkans route. This is a huge decline," said Fico, admitting that the running of internal affairs in Turkey is far from the ideals of the EU.
EU-Turkey relations suffered a sharp decline in recent days, after some EU countries banned rallies of the Turkish politicians in their countries.
But Slovak prime minister believes that there will be no big change in EU-Turkey relations in the future.
"Nothing will happen, we'll keep pelting each other. What matters for Europe is to keep the migration wave halted. I believe that in the spirit of this realistic politics, we'll certainly respect and even swallow certain things that we otherwise wouldn't respect. Unfortunately, this is how world politics works," said Fico.
EU and Turkey signed an agreement to stem the refugee-migrant flows to Europe, which includes the closure of the Balkan route to central Europe.
