Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade

Hungary will only support a resolution that reduces migration

May 23, 2016 3:26 PM

“Hungary can only support a European Union resolution that is aimed at reducing migration, but the EU’s proposal with relation to migration is more of a motivator for migration instead of being concerned about how to reduce the level of migration into Europe”, Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade Péter Szijjártó said prior to Monday’s meeting of EU foreign ministers.

Mr. Szijjártó said the proposal on migration put forward by the European Union’s High Representative for Foreign Affairs and which she would like to have adopted by the Member States’ ministers at Monday’s session was totally unacceptable.

‘The proposal says nothing about protecting the EU’s external borders and includes no proposal for the survival of the Schengen Area”, he stressed. “It is extremely unbalanced. It includes the well-known bad approaches arranged around a totally flawed concept”, he said.

Download Photo: Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade

Péter Szijjártó, Czech Foreign Minister Lubomir Zaoralek and Slovakian Minister of Foreign Affairs Miroslav Lajcak at the Brussels meeting of EU foreign ministers

Mr. Szijjártó expressed his regret that the resolution incorporates several elements from the Italian Prime Minister’s migration proposal package, but does not includes elements from the Schengen 2.0 plan put forward by Hungary’s Prime Minister.

“Hungary can only accept the proposal if conforming to responsibilities relating to border protection and the Hungarian Schengen 2.0 migration proposal package are also mentioned in the resolution, as well as the fact that hot spots (EU-operated asylum seeker registration centres) must be established outside the EU so that the question of who is entitled to enter the territory of the European Union can already be decided there”, the Hungarian Foreign Minister emphasised.

According to Mr. Szijjártó, the fact that the text states that support must be provided to countries from which migration set out for Europe, but does not mention what conditions such funding is tied to, is also unacceptable. “European taxpayers’ money should be used by beneficiary countries to reduce emigration and immigration to Europe”, he said.