Hungary’s PM Orbán To Submit Six Proposals On Migrant Crisis In Brussels

  • 23 Sep 2015 10:00 AM
Hungary’s PM Orbán To Submit Six Proposals On Migrant Crisis In Brussels
Prime Minister Viktor Orbán said he would submit six proposals on handling the migrant crisis at the European Council extraordinary meeting in Brussels. After meeting the legislative committee of the conservative CSU in Bavaria, he said the aim of his proposals was to “bring reality into European policies”. Orbán will propose that Greece should hand over the duties of protecting its borders to European countries willing to participate in such a scheme.

He will also propose separating refugees and economic migrants before they enter the Schengen area and for the EU to draw up a list of countries considered safe to live in. He suggested that EU member states and candidate countries should be automatically considered safe.

Under the fourth proposal, every member state should increase contribution to the EU by 1% and cut spending by 1%, resulting in 3 billion euros to be spent on refugees. This could be repeated as many times as necessary to fund efforts, he said. Orbán will also propose developing a partnership with states whose involvement in handling the migrant crisis is unavoidable, such as Turkey and “we must rethink our relationship with Russia as well”.

Orbán said global quotas should be introduced and all countries in the world should be involved in managing the migrant crisis. Hungary is protecting the borders of Bavaria today, Orbán said, adding that due to the European Union and the Schengen Agreement, this can be done at the external Schengen borders, and these borders coincide with Hungary’s borders.

Orbán said the solution was not to suspend Schengen rules, but to bring the situation back within “legal bounds”, which he said was possible. Hungary will build a “proper barrier” on its border with Croatia, too, he said. “If we receive a report which says we are capable of enforcing Hungarian laws by placing a physical border barrier ... while channelling entrants to designated points, then we will order the establishment of a real barrier,” he said.

Once the barrier is built it will be impossible to enter through non-designated points between Hungary and Croatia without legal consequences. “This could be any day, any hour, regardless of the threats and blackmail coming from Croatia,” he said.

Orbán said Hungary is ready to accept Germany’s decisions but it asks that they should not be obligatory. While Hungary accepts that Germany has a right to decide whether to allow everyone in or to keep everyone out, it would not like to change as a result of mass migration.

Source www.hungarymatters.hu - Visit Hungary Matters to sign-up for MTI’s twice-daily newsletter.

MTI photo: Kobza Miklós

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