Prime Minister Viktor Orbán said illegal migration cannot be stopped without setting up hotspots outside the European Union.
The prime minister told a press conference in Strasbourg on Tuesday that those who had made it to the EU "will never leave".
The only way to stop migration is by forging a consensus between member states on obliging those wanting to enter the bloc to "stop at the border, request admission, and they're not allowed to enter the EU until their request is assessed". "If we can't achieve that, we will never stop migration," he said.
No government is ready to "round up" migrants already within the borders and expel them from the EU, he said. "The only migrants who won't stay are the ones we don't allow in," PM Orbán said.
A few minutes into the presser, a young man interrupted PM Orbán, shouting in Hungarian, "How much did you get to betray the country, Mr Prime Minister? He sold it to Putin, to Xi Jinping. How much did [PM's political director] Balazs Orbán get to betray the country, Mr Prime Minister?"