Hungary has always taken in political refugees and has always granted them asylum, the Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade emphasised on the M1 news channel on Tuesday.

Péter Szijjártó reminded his audience: Prime Minister Viktor Orbán had indicated in a letter sent to the Presidents of the European Council and the European Commission on Monday that Hungary would be initiating the organisation of a summit, to be held in Budapest this autumn, on issues relating to the Western Balkan migration route. In the second half of the week, the European Council will hold a meeting in Brussels and the issue will be on the agenda there, he added.

He said that the Prime Minister had instructed him to discuss the issue with three members of the European Commission next week, including Federica Mogherini, the High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, and to prepare the Budapest conference.

The Foreign Minister said that clear line must be drawn between political refugees and economic immigrants. “Hungary has always accepted political refugees due to its history and experience, and has always granted them asylum”. When war was still ravaging the Western Balkans, Hungary received the refugees arriving from there, who ran from the region to save their own and their families’ lives from the war, without any major international assistance”, Mr. Szijjártó said.

However, economic immigrants belong to another category. In their case, a solution must be chosen that Hungary has been urging for a long time, i.e. to find a solution to the issue outside the EU, he declared. He explained: An understanding must be reached with the countries these refugees set out from, since these states are usually receive large sums of aid and funding from the EU and other international organisations as part of development programmes. In his opinion, it should be set as a condition that such funds would be used in a way that increases the standard of living and develops the country’s economy, so that the economic reasons prompting economic immigrants to leave are eliminated.

Péter Szijjártó also said that “human traffickers know European legislation just as well as those who pass these European laws”. They teach the immigrants and refugees to use every “trick and loophole”, what to say and when to say it, when personal documents should be thrown away and where they should report. “A whole astounding industry has been built on cheating these unfortunate people”, he explained. As he sees it, these “criminals” should be caught as soon as possible and their assets should be destroyed, because if this “international criminal organisation” is successfully destroyed, it would be a huge step towards stopping immigration.

The Minister said on TV2’s programme on Tuesday that on Monday, after negotiating with the foreign ministers delegated by the European People’s Party, he raised the issue of the proposed closing of borders and did not receive any criticism; the matter was received with understanding, because Hungary has an obligation to protect the external border of the Schengen area.

(Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade)