“Despite all pressure, blackmail and ultimatums, neither Hungary nor Poland will admit a single illegal immigrant”, Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade Péter Szijjártó stressed on Thursday in Warsaw following a meeting with Polish Interior Minister Joachim Brudziński.
During the course of the negotiations is was confirmed that “the more pressure they attempt to place on us from Western Europe, the more they blackmail us and the more ultimatums they give us, Polish-Hungarian cooperation on migration will be all the more strong and stable”, Mr. Szijjártó told Hungarian news agency MTI.
The Hungarian Foreign Minister was reacting to the statement by Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel, according to which “they will be giving an ultimatum to Visegrád Group countries that refuse to admit migrants”. According to the Belgian head of government if a consensus is not achieved in the council of EU member state prime ministers by the end of June, then the planned reforms will be adopted without the V4 with a qualified majority vote”.
It was also made clear at the meeting that neither Hungary nor Poland will be admitting a single illegal immigrant, just as they have not done so until now. “We will not give up the protection of our borders, we regard this as the most important security issue”, he stressed, adding that the security of our citizens is the most important criteria for both Budapest and Warsaw. The Minister and Mr. Brudziński also agreed that they will not be voting in favour of any proposals within the European Union that include the mandatory resettlement quota “in concrete form or in a figurative manner, or which make reference to it”, Mr. Szijjártó said.
According to Mr. Szijjártó, the two ministers also share a similar view with relation to the UN’s draft migration package. The document being drawn up urges countries to open their borders and exploit the advantages of immigration. “UN Secretary General António Guterres is a pro-migration politician”, the Hungarian Foreign Minister underlined. The UN document regards migration as something that is “fundamentally good and unstoppable”, he pointed out. “We are of an exactly opposite opinion; we believe migration is bad and a security risk, which not only can be stopped, but must be stopped”, he added.
In reply to a question from MTI concerning the fact that EU ministers could authorise the resettlement of refugees within the framework of the Dublin IV regulation through a majority vote and not a unanimous vote, Mr. Szijjártó emphasised: Both Hungary and Poland “firmly reject” the fact that the EU “should stoop to a similar dastardly trick as it did in 2015”, when the European Council made it absolutely clear with a unanimous vote that “any kind of quota can only be voluntary, despite which the Council of Interior Ministers adopted the plan with a majority vote at a lower level and made the quota mandatory”. “We object to any EU institution committing a similar foul deed in the upcoming period”, Mr. Szijjártó underlined.
The Minister told the press that during his visit to Warsaw he has also held talks with Polish Minister for Transport and Infrastructure Andrzej Adamczyk. “We are standing in the gateway of a historic period with relation to Central Europe’s energy security”, he said, explaining that two soon-to-be-realised projects will enable the establishment of the north-south gas corridor reaching from the Baltic Sea to the Black Sea.
Hungarian companies have acquired the rights to transport the full capacity of Romanian natural gas to be extracted on the Black Sea by American enterprises to Hungary, and the Romanians will be constructing the required compressors by 2022, he said.
According to Mr. Szijjártó, the Polish-Slovakian interconnector should also be completed by the early 2020s and will supplement the north-south gas corridor network, enabling the pumping of national gas from the Baltic Sea to the Black Sea. This will enable Hungary to procure at least half of the natural gas that it has been importing from Russia so far from other sources beginning in 2022, the Hungarian Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade said, calling the development a huge step forward for energy security.
(Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade/MTI)
