Fidesz MEP Balázs Hidvéghi has told Kossuth Rádió that the European Parliament “keeps pushing the same, impractical solutions as ever and protracting the migration crisis."
The ruling party MEP said that whereas the EP advocates distributing illegal migrants across the bloc to be accommodated by member states, the EU should prioritize border protection and “make it a fundamental principle that the EU cannot be entered illegally, and those doing so will be sent back to where they came from.” This, he said, could be “the beginning of the real solution” to reining in people smuggling and illegal entry. “Many do enter the EU and stay; this is the problem to be addressed … but the EU’s pro-migration side does not think so, and they keep pushing the wrong solutions,” he said. He slammed Hungary’s leftist MEPs for supporting the EP’s recent position on the matter. “Not taking our own laws and rules seriously only protracts the crisis; we cannot expect the crisis to be over while failing to enforce those laws, since migrants, many of whom are not refugees but economic migrants, will exploit Europe’s weakness,” Hidvéghi said. Meanwhile, the MEP said that corruption connected with travel by several officials of the European Commission was “yet more evidence of systemic corruption in Brussels”. “It’s increasingly obvious that the whole decision-making apparatus of Brussels has become corrupted,” he said. Another sign of the “corruption” is that officials “have abused their power on a number of occasions, for example by waging a political revenge campaign against Hungary and Poland, blackmailing and threatening [them],” he said. “It is unacceptable that European officials travel to have talks at which there are high stakes, with the other side paying for their flights and accommodation … accepting those you cannot negotiate objectively and impartially,” he said. “This is a textbook example of bribery, and it seems that a number of the European Commission’s officials have been involved,” Hidvéghi added.