Rather than harassing EU nationals at the borders, illegal migration should be stopped, State Secretary for Government Communication Bence Tuzson said at his press conference held in Budapest on Saturday in the context of an EU regulation currently in the making.

The EU may adopt a regulation in March which will have to be rendered effective just 20 days later. In the event of the entry into force of the EU legislation, every EU national, their data and documents will be subjected to thorough checks upon every entry and exit at the EU borders, the State Secretary said.

Hungary has the longest Schengen land border in the European Union: 1,053 kilometres. This border section is crossed by tens of millions of people and vehicles every year. The new regulation would mean that, even with the best organisation, the duration of exiting and entering the border would increase by eight seconds in the case of each and every EU national crossing the border inward or outward. As a result, at the Croatian or Romanian border in the summer we should prepare for waits for up to 8 to 10 hours, and we should expect similar scenes also in Ferihegy as the EU regulation would equally apply to airports which could have significant financial implications as well, Mr Tuzson said.

While Hungary is doing its utmost in the interest of the physical and legal protection of the EU’s borders, Brussels is unable to implement effective measures to counter illegal migration, and has to date failed to seal the immigration routes. Migrants are in particular able to enter Europe without documents of any kind via the sea borders, the government party politician remarked.

This new Brussels regulation is able to prevent neither illegal immigration, nor terrorism. All it is good for is to harass EU nationals without good reason. The regulation further raises issues of sovereignty as the EU would once again withdraw a power from the Hungarian State which will hereafter not be able to decide independently on who may enter the territory of the country, the State Secretary pointed out.

The Hungarian Government is firmly opposed to this yet another bureaucratic and unreasonable measure of Brussels which conveys the threat of crushing the entire Schengen system, Mr Tuzson highlighted.

In his most recent radio interview given on Friday morning, Prime Minister Viktor Orbán criticised the so-called regime of systematic checks at the external borders contemplated by the EU which is, in his view, “an utter nightmare”, and would amount to the “harassment” of EU nationals. While illegal migrants are being let into the EU continuously, they would require full checks in relation to law-abiding, passport-holder EU nationals. It is an elementary interest to induce Brussels to see reason on this issue, the Prime Minister added on Friday.

(MTI)