Pursuant to the regulation which will enter into force on Wednesday, the European Border and Coast Guard Agency (Frontex) is being strengthened in terms of staff and its mandate will also extend to helping nation states with the protection of their borders, Chief Security Advisor to the Prime Minister György Bakondi said in an interview on the public service television news channel M1.

The chief advisor said after the entry into force of the regulation on the European Border and Coast Guard Agency, which also serves to guarantee the more effective protection of the EU’s external borders, the operational staff of Frontex will be gradually boosted to reach approximately 10,000 over a period of several years.

He stressed that the Hungarian position regarding the issue of migration has not changed: Hungary does not support any mandatory quotas, and stands for the securing of the external borders and the deportation of migrants staying in Europe illegally.

He also said the Italian government, contrary to its election promises, has changed the stringent measures adopted while Matteo Salvini was in office as interior minister, and as a result, boats transporting African migrants are arriving in Europe continuously.

“In actual fact, since 2015 the situation has not changed much: over and over again they claim that the sole indicator of European solidarity, and a fundamental indicator of the state of the rule of law is whether states take in illegal migrants arriving without documents and crossing their borders illegally,” he said.

On Kossuth Radio’s Wednesday morning programme, the chief advisor also highlighted that the number of migrants attempting to cross the Hungarian-Croatian and Hungarian-Romanian borders illegally has increased significantly, by hundreds of persons, while attempts are also being made from the direction of Ukraine.

(MTI)