“The European Commission’s representative is going totally against the will of the European nations”, Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade Péter Szijjártó said on Wednesday in reaction to the fact that at one of the events held on the sidelines of the 73rd session of the UN General Assembly in New York, the Brussels commission’s member for migration affairs, Dimitris Avramopoulos called on EU member states to make good on their promises with relation to transferring and re-settling immigrants.

In a statement to Hungarian news agency MTI, the Minister said: “Neither Hungary, nor the other countries of the Visegrád Group, nor any other European country wants to legalise illegal immigration”, adding that “Although the European Commission is pushing the issue, a good many member states do not want to become immigrant countries”.

“It is unacceptable and outrageous that the European Commissioner spoke in the name of the European Union on this issue, when he knows perfectly well that many countries do not agree with this suggestion and many countries do not want resettlement programmes”, Mr. Szijjártó emphasised.

“This is why we did not and accept and will not be accepting the UN Global Compact for Migration”, the Hungarian Minister underlined.

At the “Global Compact for Migration – A Better Model for Solidarity and Cooperation” event held on the sidelines of the current session of the UN General Assembly, Dimitris Avramopoulos expressed his hope that EU member states will soon adopt the new EU immigrant resettlement programme. He said that the EU supports the UN’s migration package and pointed out that EU member states had made voluntary commitments with relation to the transfer of refugees. According to the latest commitments, 50 thousand refugees should be transferred among the member states by the end of next year, but so far only 13,200 have been resettled in other countries.

(MTI)