Péter Szijjártó, Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade, said Hungary and Denmark are committed to a strict immigration policy.
Speaking in Copenhagen at a joint press conference held with Danish counterpart Lars Lokke Rasmussen, the foreign minister added that during its EU presidency, Hungary would prioritise stopping migration. Minister Szijjártó said improving Europe’s security and competitiveness would be the chief aim of its presidency. The minister said that as long as Europe continued to act as a magnet to migrants, security challenges would mount up, with organised crime and terrorism gaining ground. Strict immigration policy, in Hungary’s view, is based on strong border protection and stopping migration instead of managing it, he added. Migrants, he said, should only be allowed to enter Europe if they are legal, and help should be given at the location of the problem rather than the problem being imported. Africa’s population, he said, was on track to grow by an estimated 750 million in the next twenty years, and jobs, health care, and education must be made available to these people. “We’ll find ourselves facing a challenge we’re unable to meet” unless such conditions were provided, the minister said. Minister Szijjártó hailed Denmark’s immigration policy, saying the country was one of the very few countries in the EU that showed “common sense” on migration.
Meanwhile, he said Hungary and Denmark were both successful export-oriented economies, “so it’s in our common interest that world trade should be free of barriers as well as fair”. Minister Szijjártó called for the EU to accelerate free trade negotiations with rapidly growing states such as those in South-East Asia. Also, trade disputes should be resolved on a common-sense basis without mixing them up with ideological issues, he said. Danish companies, he noted, are among the top 20 foreign investors in Hungary, and the government has concluded strategic partnerships with three of them. Last year bilateral trade turnover hit a record 1.6 billion euros, the minister added.