János Bóka, Hungary’s EU affairs minister, said protecting the community’s external borders is “key for the debate on migration” within the European Union, but “the EU’s concept is not comprehensive”, it cannot be used to reduce the number of migrants entering Europe.
In an interview published online by Die Welt on Friday, Bóka said the EU’s position was getting closer to that of the Hungarian government “but debates are still not aimed at granting entry to those people only that have the right to enter Europe”. Bóka said eliminating the networks of human traffickers called for bilateral agreements with countries in Africa and the Middle East under which they would accommodate the illegal migrants returned from Europe. Bóka said that the Visegrad Group – Hungary, the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Poland – shared a position on migration, adding that other countries such as Austria and Denmark that “offer solutions similar to those of Hungary”. “The position of the German government is vastly different, however,” Bóka said.