Hungary may start proceedings to quit the UN’s migration package unless “there is a positive shift, towards Hungary’s position”, the foreign minister has said.
Péter Szijjártó, minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade, said the government has instructed him to review the first draft of the package, to be published on February 5th, and start the procedure to quit the talks if the document is “as pro-migration” as the 2016 declaration.
The minister added that the UN secretary-general’s recent statement, which we covered yesterday, could serve as its basis.
Minister Szijjártó said the package is scheduled to be adopted at the end of this year, and the inter-governmental negotiations have not even started but the secretary-general “has already announced the result”.
Minister Szijjártó also insisted that the “plan” of US financier George Soros concerning migration did exist “as a clear concept” and “there seems a parallel” with the UN chief’s recent statement.
According to MTI, the foreign minister said that both the stance of the UN declaration and of the secretary-general’s statement were in conflict with Hungary’s position and interests because they suggested that “migration is good and unavoidable”.
The Hungarian government has made it clear that they feel migration is “not a positive trend” and it “poses serious security risks and can be halted”.
The minister said that both the declaration and the statement suggest that immigration bureaucracy should be simplified, which would give further incentive to people mulling to leave their homeland, while it would also “loosen up” the national migration policies.
The UN says that countries “not impacted by migration” should launch programs to accommodate migrants, which, rather than easing the problem, would make the challenge “even more serious”, the minister added.
He said that “the ability to protect the border is one of the most important aspects of statehood, an important component of sovereignty.”
The declaration seeks to make the “right to migration appear as a fundamental human right as well as to remove the difference between legal and illegal migration, which is unacceptable,” Minister Szijjártó concluded.