“By spending 800 million euros on border protection, Hungary has become the European state that is showing the greatest level of solidarity towards Germany”, Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade Péter Szijjártó said in a statement to Hungarian news agency MTI on Thursday in Vienna.

The Minister, who arrived in Vienna to attend a session of the Ministerial Council of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), was reacting to a statement by Martin Schulz in which the leader of the German Social Democratic Party (SPD) said: Hungary is moving further and further away from the European Union.

Mr. Szijjártó declared: “It is precisely Hungary who is showing the highest level of solidarity with Germany”, because if Hungary had not invested 800 million euros in border protection then the number of illegal immigrants who have arrived in Europe would not be one-and-a half million, but many, many more, and the vast majority of them would have gone to Germany.

The Hungarian Foreign Minister said that in his opinion by spending 800 million euros on border protection instead of economic development, Hungary has risen up to become the European state that is showing the highest level of solidarity towards Germany, and “it was we who saved Germany from having to shoulder even more burdens”.

(Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade/MTI)