The Luxembourg Minister for Immigration and Asylum Jean Asselborn appealed not to exclude the countries of Višegrad, while emphasizing solidarity, in an interview with German ZDF Television of September 15, 2015. "Effort should be made to engage them and encourage them to promote solidarity", he said, in the wake of an extraordinary Justice and Home Affairs Council (JHA) convened by the Luxembourg Presidency to find a response to the unprecedented scale of the refugee crisis.
At the Extraordinary Council, a majority of Member States reached an agreement in principle on the proposal of the European Commission to urgently relocate 120,000 people in need of international protection. But the "Višegrad Group" (Hungary, Poland, Czech Republic, Slovakia), joined by Romania, opposed it, in particular rejecting the restrictive quota system proposed by the Commission.
Jean Asselborn warned the countries that displayed their reservations against the consequences of their lack of solidarity. "If Europe fails to meet this challenge that is imposed on it, Europe in this form will seize to exist, there will be no values. Everything that was built after World War II, will collapse", he warned. The Minister also said that in the meantime, the EU must solve the problem with countries that demonstrate good will.
In another interview with the German radio RBB broadcast on the same day, Jean Asselborn stated that "since the Treaty of Lisbon, Europe works with the qualified majority" and that "we have to do what is expected of us and we will do it". He also stressed that no EU countries, including the Višegrad group, wants the Schengen area to be dismantled. "This is a major achievement for the European Union that must not be destroyed. The refugee problem will not be resolved if each member state is refocusing on itself", said he said.