“The proposal announced on Tuesday with regard to the migration situation by European Commissioner for Migration Dimitris Avramopoulos is astounding, and Hungary rejects it accordingly”, Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade Péter Szijjártó told Hungarian news agency MTI on Wednesday.

Mr. Szijjártó, who is currently in China attending a meeting of Chinese and Eastern European Ministers of Trade, was responding to the fact that at his press conference in Strasbourg on Tuesday Mr. Avramopoulos announced: The EU plans to create an opportunity for legal migration through reforming the European blue card system and more effective integration. The wave of migrants reaching Europe is forcing the EU to create the conditions for legal migration for all those who want to find work on the continent, he said.

In the interests of more effective integration and making it easier to find work, the European blue card system will primarily be available to highly-trained workers from third countries outside the EU, the Commissioner explained.

“Through such announcements the European Commission is increasingly giving the impression that it wants Europe’s demise’, because they will lead to Europe being flooded with even more migrants. Both migrants and people traffickers interpret such proposals as an invitation”, Mr. Szijjártó explained.

According to the Hungarian Foreign Minister the European Commission should finally stop working on how to increase migration pressure on Europe and instead begin work on decreasing that pressure. In addition the proposal is not only astounding, but also pointless, because unemployment exists in most Member Sates of the European Union, he continued. Although the unemployment rate in Hungary has been falling consistently since 2010, the primary goal of the Hungarian Government remains to provide work for Hungarians and to create jobs for them, and this is a target that the Government will not abandon in future.

“Accordingly, Hungary rejects the European Commission’s proposal in the strongest possible terms”, Mr. Szijjártó stressed.

(Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade)