Prime Minister Viktor Orbán has said that if the Hungarian government gives in to Brussels' plans to “force uncontrolled migration onto Hungarians”, the country will change.
During an interview with the M1 news channel, the prime minister said that “we will not allow them to take away our right… to decide whom we want to live together with and whom we don’t want to live with in Hungary."
Regarding the EU’s proposed migrant redistribution scheme, PM Orbán said Hungary’s problem was not with migrants themselves but rather with Brussels, arguing that the European Commission “wants to settle people in our country whom we do not want to live together with.”
According to MTI today, Orbán said that while the left considers the matter of migrant redistribution an ideological one, the government considers it a national security issue.
He said migrants can only be helped if “we take the help to where they are now instead of letting the problem into Europe.” Orbán said the Hungarian government spends a large amount of money on aiding migrants’ countries of origin.
“If we want to help everyone by acknowledging that they have a universal right to a better life and taking them in . then we will ruin Europe and by default Hungary, too,” he said.
The prime minister noted that Hungary had implemented a migration policy focusing on self-defense. But he said Brussels was “applying double standards”, arguing that while the EU had criticized Hungary for installing a border fence to keep migrants out, Greece is never criticized or urged to act on managing the migrant inflow.
PM Orbán said that the problem of migration would not keep recurring in Europe if Greece fulfilled its international commitments and protected its borders. But it is either unable or unwilling to do this and has thus made Hungary a periphery Schengen country of the EU.
“We have become a line of defence against our will,” he said. “The braver politicians in Germany and Austria” admit that what Hungary is doing also benefits their countries, he said.
The prime minister said that if Greece is unable or unwilling to protect its own borders, then the EU should build “a European line of defence” along Greece’s border with Macedonia and Bulgaria. If the EU fails to do so, then the line of defence will ultimately shift northward, making Hungary a frontline country again, he insisted.
“But my counterparts don’t support this [proposal] because they think that if there is trouble then Hungarians will again fulfil their duties laid out in the Schengen Agreement and protect not just their own country but Austria and Germany as well,” Orbán said.
Orbán said the migration pressure Europe is experiencing now is just the beginning of a mass migration wave. He said the migration pressure will increase once the millions of people waiting to emigrate from the central regions of Africa set off for Europe.
Regarding the proposal to set up a joint European army, the prime minister said genuine refugees and economic migrants should both be stopped outside the EU’s territory. There it should be determined who is eligible for filing an asylum request and only those who request and gain asylum status should be allowed to enter Europe, he said.
He concluded that such an area set up for the registration of migrants should also be protected by military forces.
Hungarians are set to vote 'no' in record numbers at the October 2 referendum, against EU plans to force Hungary to accept their forced migration quotas.