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The Prime Minister stressed that migration was a difficult problem in itself, but aggravated by a poor EU leadership, it was destroying cooperation within the European Union.
“Within the EU the Prime Minister of Slovakia and I are ready to take part in the creation of new rules; we can be absolutely certain that the present rules must be forgotten and new ones must be created,” Mr Orbán laid down.
The Prime Minister took the view that there is “a near-revolt situation” in the European Union. The Polish Prime Minister has already revolted as he announced the suspension of European migration rules, and the German Chancellor, too, has revolted, having announced the suspension of the rules which he would be required to comply with in the interest of the continued functioning of the Schengen Area, he pointed out.
In Mr Orbán’s words, ever more people will start revolting, and “this will not only destroy the migration pact – that deserves to be buried, and the sooner the better – but will cause European cooperation itself to rupture.”
Today, they are talking about a problem which is important not only because it causes problems to one country or another, but also because the EU’s poor leadership is unable to manage the problem, and this is leading to a situation where Member States refuse to enforce the rules of the migration pact, he stressed. He highlighted that this will not happen in an orderly fashion, through the revocation of the rules and the creation of new ones, but rather “through what we’re experiencing today,” that countries stop complying with the Schengen rules.
Schengen is dying this very moment as a result, and “there is nothing we can do about it, the whole thing is falling apart,” he said.
Regarding the ruling of the European Court of Justice imposing a fine on Hungary in connection with immigration, the Prime Minister said they are asking “the Brusselites” to suspend this decision, to reconsider it, to seek to come to an agreement instead, but they believe there is little chance of this happening. At the same time, there is a near-revolt situation in Europe, a new development, he added.
In answer to a journalist’s question about when the first migrant groups could set out from Hungary for Brussels, the Prime Minister said “it’s common knowledge that the Hungarians have faith in hussar charges; there will be hussar charges, we will take there – within the boundaries of the law – the migrants whom the Brusselites want to dump on us, but this is not the place for discussing the details.”
At the press conference, the Hungarian Prime Minister said together with Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico and Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic, they have spent more than forty years in total leading their respective countries, and this compels them to recognise causal relationships which others with less experience fail to recognise.
He underlined that everyone was primarily responsible for their own country, but regional cooperation – which they had tried to comply with in the area of migration – was equally emphatic.
Confirming the Slovak Prime Minister’s words, Mr Orbán stressed that “what happened was exactly what we said would happen,” already in 2015, one could see that if people coming from alien cultures in the millions are allowed to enter the continent without controls and permission, that will lead to problems.
The Prime Minister pointed out that within the EU, no responsibility lay either with him, or with Mr Fico because “we were the ones who stated in advance that unless you follow our example, unless you fight against illegal migration, you will find yourselves in trouble.”
They did not listen to us, and now people in the West are compelled to capitulate to the facts, the Prime Minister stated. He pointed out that since 2015 eight million asylum requests had been submitted in the European Union, and since 2015 there had been 3.8 million illegal border-crossing attempts; Hungary alone has detained a million people.
The Prime Minister laid down that based on the facts, the EU is unable to expel migrants who entered its territory illegally; last year, authorities in the EU adopted 430,000 expulsion decisions, of which they were only able to enforce 84,000.
Western leaders are panicking due to illegal migration, Mr Orbán stated. He stressed that panic can only lead to bad decisions, such as the suspension of the Schengen rules and the reinstatement of border controls, and so in actual fact, illegal migration is destroying the EU’s greatest achievement, the right to move freely across borders. It was possible to foresee that it would lead to increased crime rates, and that rather than solving the problem, the migration pact would only aggravate it. Therefore, this pact is the problem itself, he stressed.
The Hungarian Prime Minister recalled that Hungary had been handed down a fine of EUR 200 million just for not letting illegal migrants in, “and every day, we pay one million euros because we’re defending Europe.” He added that they wanted to distribute illegal migrants based on quotas, and in the event of a crisis, the European Commission would have the authority to distribute optional numbers of people over and above the quotas.
The Hungarian Prime Minister stated that so far only the Hungarian model had worked against illegal migration: the Hungarian model lays down that a person is only allowed to enter the country once there is a decision on their case. “People must wait outside. All other solutions are ineffective,” Mr Orbán laid down.
The Prime Minister also spoke about the fact that the issue of ‘home’ stood at the centre of the internal political problems people in the West are facing.
“You can lose your home in one of two ways: one is that someone drives you away from your home; the other one is that you stay at home, but all of a sudden everything around you changes without you having consented to this,” he said.
He observed that Slovakia and Hungary had defended themselves against this problem, and as a result, Slovaks and Hungarians were able to feel at home in their own countries. At the same time, the Hungarian Prime Minister expressed hope that the Serbs, too, would succeed in preserving the sensation of feeling at home in their own country.
Regarding economic cooperation, he said Hungary has a vested interest in cooperating with Slovakia and Serbia, and he is ready to continue cooperation “in this form.”
Slovakia is among Hungary’s ten most important economic partners, while Hungary has increased trade with Serbia six-fold during Aleksandar Vucic’s presidency, he pointed out.
In Mr Orbán’s words, Serbian-Hungarian relations also play a part in Hungary’s economic neutrality as Serbia has a free trade agreement with China, while for Hungary both Slovakia and Serbia are “crucial countries” from the viewpoint of energy independence as well.
The Prime Minister pointed out that Hungary was supplied with energy by Serbia from the South and Slovakia from the North at times when “eastern relations are not working, and these are now coming to a halt.”
“We’d like to thank both Serbs and Slovaks for helping us to preserve Hungary’s energy independence,” he added.
At the press conference, the Prime Minister expressed pleasure at the fact that he was able to attend a meeting where “peace was not a dirty word.”
“Today, I had the pleasure of being in a Christian environment where the most important Christian commandment – striving for peace – was seen by politicians in office as the most important moral commandment,” he stated.
