B

PM Orbán: Brussels is pursuing a misguided migration policy

Hungary has always proposed a fair solution to Brussels to protect its borders: We pay half of the costs, while Brussels pays the other half, Prime Minister Viktor Orbán said at a joint press conference of V4 prime ministers following their meeting in Budapest.

According to PM Orbán, Brussels is pursuing a misguided policy and is financing all the policies that help migration. It’s only the physical protection of common EU borders that Brussels does not finance, he said, adding that the EU must pay the costs of border protection.

Hungary has always proposed a fair solution to Brussels: We pay half of the costs, while Brussels foots the rest of the bill, the prime minister said. "The European Union must pay the costs of European border defense; this financial burden must not be exclusively borne by those countries that history has assigned as the external borders of the European Union."

The EU should not support any country that has anything to do with migration pressure at the borders, Prime Minister Orbán added, expressing his solidarity with the Poles who are defending the EU border with Belarus.

The PM said that “the EU is under pressure from three directions.” According to him, 30,000 to 35,000 people leave Afghanistan every day, so the European Union must expect the pressure on the Balkan route to increase. Meanwhile, there is the Mediterranean route, plus a third direction, "another attack on the Poles, as our Polish friends are under attack because of migration from the east.”

Slovakian Prime Minister Eduard Heger said that the hybrid threat on the Polish-Belarusian border must be constantly addressed.

In Czech Prime Minister Andrej Babis’s view, the Visegrád Four are working well together. Europe is facing a growing number of problems, including migration, he added. “Everyone criticized [PM] Orbán when he built a fence in 2015, while now many countries want money from the [European] Commission to build a fence.”

Babis said that what is happening on the Polish-Belarusian border is unacceptable. “We support any sanctions against Minsk,” he said, also adding that “the European Commission should finally do something about energy prices.”

According to Polish PM Mateusz Morawiecki, the level of solidarity and the positive response to their concerns have been very constructive. He explained that the crisis was caused by Belarus; it was a political crisis in which people were just tools to create chaos in the EU.

“That is why NATO and our other allies were mobilized. We will constantly defend our borders,” PM Morawiecki said.

Turning to the energy crisis, the Polish PM said that the price of carbon emissions in the EU has become very expensive. Meanwhile, he added, there are unrealistic prices for natural gas.

“We have launched a very broad diplomatic campaign to make our views known to our partners around the world,” Morawiecki said. He then turned to Prime Minister Orbán, saying that while Poland is now defending the EU’s external borders, “the EU should be grateful to Viktor Orbán for defending the borders in the past.”