(VOVworld) - Leaders of the Visegrad Group (V4), which includes Poland, Slovakia, Hungary, and the Czech Republic, vowed Tuesday not to be blackmailed by threats of financial punishment from the EU if they don't join in the relocation of thousands of Middle Eastern and African refugees.

Central Europe's leaders reject EU's relocation of migrants (Source:: AFP/VNA)

Following a V4 meeting in Warsaw, Polish Prime Minister Beata Szydlo said Poland and the Visegrad Group will never agree to this blackmail or to such conditions to be dictated. Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico also said it was "blackmail" to tie the issue of EU funding to migration policy. Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, who has called mass migration a "Trojan horse for terrorism", defended his new policy of detaining migrants at the border. 

The V4 leaders said they have a sovereign right to decide how to deal with migrants who have flooded into the continent, mainly from the war in Syria. Austria also said it will seek an exemption from having to accept more asylum-seekers, arguing that it has already taken in its fair share during Europe's migration crisis.