V4 summit in Budapest

Prime Minister Orbán calls on the European Union to drop infringement procedures against Hungary and Poland, and help them protect Europe from illegal immigration.

Addressing the extraordinary Visegrád Group summit on Tuesday, PM Orbán warned that the EU is experiencing unprecedented migration pressure. He called on the EU to assist Poland in defending its borders and thus the external borders of the European Union, rather than financing NGOs that help illegal migrants reach Europe from Belarus.

In an opinion piece published before the V4 meeting, Magyar Hírlap’s Mariann Őry agrees with Prime Minister Orbán in suggesting the EU should consider illegal migration as the most important political issue of our days. Őry recalls that Prime Minister Orbán asked EC President Ursula Von der Leyen to revise EU refugee policies, drop the infringement procedure against Hungary (initiated partly as a reaction to the Hungarian government’s decision to erect a border fence in 2015), and instead offer financial help to defend Europe’s borders. In its reply on Tuesday, the EC said that it is not in its power to halt infringement procedures.

In Népszava, Tamás Rónay doubts that the V4 meeting was convened because of the migration crisis on the Polish-Belarus border. The left-wing pundit thinks that Hungary and Poland’s real motive was to make their case at the V4 meeting that the EU should stop the infringement procedures against them. Rónay argues that both governments desperately need EU money transfers, and back up their claim that the infringement policies should be halted by referring to their strenuous efforts to protect the borders of the European Union.

Tags: border fence, EU, European Commission, infringement procedure, migration, Orbán, Visegrád 4, von der Leyen