‘Hungary will respect ECJ quota verdict’ – Viktor Orbán

A conservative commentator entertains no doubts, that the European Court could find a legitimate basis for rejecting Hungary’s and Slovakia’s complaint against compulsory migrant quotas, but believes the quota system will prove disastrous for the European Union. 

In his regular biweekly radio interview, Prime Minister Viktor Orbán said he fully subscribes to a statement by Prime Minister Robert Fico of Slovakia who said that his country would respect the ruling of the European Court. Mr Orbán added however that Hungary would not change her immigration policy and does not intend to create what he called ‘an immigrant society’.

On Mandiner, Gellért Rajcsányi admits that the decision to impose quotas on member countries could be expected, prompted either by the European legal framework or by political and ideological commitments. That doesn’t make migrant quotas a sensible, sustainable or workable system, however, he adds. On the contrary, migrants have a few specific target countries in the West and will hardly accept relocation to some distant Bulgarian village or the Hungarian rust-belt town of Ózd, for instance. Rajcsányi outlines a horror scenario to describe the future of the EU in case compulsory migrant relocation becomes the rule in Europe. Countries will play a horrific ‘migrant ping-pong game’, sending migrants back and forth and the ensuing political skirmishes and border controls as well as mutual recriminations will progressively destroy the very community ideal that the quota system is supposed to represent. ’Brace yourselves’, Rajcsányi concludes in English, ’winter is coming’.

In Figyelő, Balázs Orbán, director of the Migration Research Institute set up by two pro-government foundations in September 2015, at the height of the wave of mass immigration to Europe, warns that although Europe is receiving less migrants than two years ago, millions are planning to cross into Europe from Asia and Africa. In addition, there are several tens of thousands of migrants stuck along the Balkan route and they are slowly filtering into Western Europe. Hungary’s border fence, apart from being an efficient and practical physical obstacle to illegal immigration, he continues, is also a symbolic message which makes it unequivocal to illegal migrants that what they are doing is unlawful and is not welcome. Meanwhile, interviews conducted by the Migration Research Institute with thousands of refugees make clear that they were strongly influenced by what they perceived as an invitation from Germany. The European attitude has of course changed since 2015, but no significant and unequivocal messages have been sent to potential illegal immigrants, apart from the Hungarian border fence. Instead, Orbán explains, Europe is trying to outsource its own protection from illegal migrants and thus sinks into dependency on foreign powers, like Turkey or the Libyan authorities and tribal militias. Orbán admits, nonetheless, that mass illegal migration cannot be quelled in the long run without understanding, solving or at least alleviating the problems that cause emigration from Asia and Africa.

Tags: migrants, Orbán, quotas