Hungary has officially quit the United Nations Global Compact for Migration.
Péter Szijjártó, minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade, made the announcement on Tuesday and said it has become clear that the differences between Hungary’s position on migration and the UN’s approach are irreconcilable.
“Hungary will maintain its position and no global package can change that,” the minister said. “We see migration processes from a different perspective,” he added.
The minister said that the UN believes that migration is unavoidable, beneficial and should be supported, while Hungary considers it a threat to the security of Hungary and Europe. He added that the UN’s aim was to encourage migration whereas Hungary’s goal was to stop it.
The Global Compact for Migration includes some agreeable targets, such as taking action against human smugglers, but its effect will be contrary even to these, the minister said.
He added that a document that encourages migration will only benefit human smugglers because they can then convince more people to set off, telling them that they will be accepted in line with the global compact.
The minister stressed that Hungary’s position is that it would be unnatural to change the population of the continent and global efforts should instead be made to stop migration.
He highlighted that the migration compact includes certain obligations that Hungary would not be willing fulfil, such as organizing training sessions for migrants before they set off and after they arrive, granting allowances to those send home remittances, enabling NGOs to help migrants submit complaints, increasing migrant reception capacities and viewing border crossing as a human rights issue instead of a security issue.
The minister said Hungary has introduced “precisely contrary measures” in order to protect the security of citizens.
Minister Szijjártó concluded that considering that the US had not even participated in the talks on the Global Compact for Migration and several countries had expressed dissatisfaction at the end of talks, Hungary was unlikely to meet with any negative fallout as a result of its announcement.