Hungary: Orbán wants to protect borders - if necessary by force

The Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, who is also the chairman of the ruling Fidesz party, expects another huge influx of refugees. His country will reject these new flows of migrants as was the case during the refugee crisis of 2015.

According to Hungarian media, Orbán said literally, "If Turkey lets more hundreds of thousands of people out, we have to use force to protect the Hungarian border (...)." This was also reported by the Austrian news portal oe24.at and the German TV news channel ntv.

Turkish president Erdoğan, has threatened that if criticism and sanctions by Western countries are aggravated by Turkey's offensive policy, the Turkish authorities would no longer want to prevent millions of refugees from Syria from continuing to travel to countries the EU. Erdoğan knows well what is at stake: The most preferred destination for most migrants is Germany.

Erdoğan has repeatedly threatened to open the borders to the currently 3.6 million Syrian refugees who are in Turkey if the EU does not provide more support to the country. He accused the EU of not keeping its promises: "Now tell us that you will deny us the three billion euros. Have you ever kept your promises to us? No."

Hungary is so far the only EU country that has shown understanding for the offensive of the Turkish military on the territory of Syria. Apparently, the Hungarian government believes that Turkey's military offensive policy is apt to prevent or at least curb recent large Arab-Muslim migrations to Europe.

Hungary rejects the Islamization of the country
In September 2015, the majority of EU member states decided - against the declared wishes of Slovakia, Hungary, the Czech Republic and Romania - to redistribute up to 120,000 refugees from Italy and Greece. This was intended to relieve the two primary destinations for refugees.

According to this EU decision, for example, Hungary should have accepted up to 1,294 "refugees", Slovakia 802. According to Handelsblatt, Hungary did not receive any of these migrants at least until May 2017, Slovakia only 16, and in subsequent years Hungary persistently refused to accept any contingents of immigrants.

Against the EU refugee policy
In February, the Hungarian head of state criticized the EU's immigration policy with sharp words in a letter distributed to all Hungarian households. The Prime Minister accuses the EU of having "learned nothing of the terrible terror attacks of recent years". The European Union "wants to bring more migrants to Europe". Prime Minister Orbán warns of the "Brussels bureaucrats" who wanted to "break the resistance of countries that are against immigration".

German media, which are in their vast majority biiter opponents of Orbán speak in a derogatory way about a "campaign against the European Union and its immigration policy."

Source:
Neue Migrationswellen: Orbán will Grenzen schützen – notfalls mit Gewalt (Tichys Einblick)

Photo: REUTERS/Francois Lenoir