The UN General Assembly is making a very serious mistake by adopting the global migration compact at its Wednesday plenary meeting, Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade Péter Szijjártó said shortly before the beginning of the meeting in New York.

He added that the world organisation is making the exact same mistake that the European Union has made in the past three and a half years. Additionally, while the flawed EU policy only leads to dangerous processes at a European level, the global compact will generate threats world-wide, inducing ever further flows of migration.

He stressed that the compact utterly disregards the interests of the countries and people who would like to live in peace and security in their own countries, as they have done in the past few decades.

Mr Szijjártó pointed out the compact lays down that each and every country is affected by migration, as a country of origin, transit country or a country of destination. Hungary, however, does not agree with this, and does not wish to become any one of those three.

According to the Foreign Minister, “this compact amounts to a betrayal of Europe”, and it is evident that neither the countries of Europe, nor Brussels itself heeded the preparations. At the same time, the interests of African and Latin American countries as well as those of small island countries are fully reflected in the compact.

Mr Szijjártó said it is quite telling that there are ever more UN member states which do not accept the compact. “I believe this number has increased parallel with the number of those who have actually read what the compact entails”, he said.

He repeated that for Hungary the interests and security of the Hungarian people are the top priority. The essence of its migration policy is clear: it protects its borders, and no one may enter the country’s territory illegally.

Mr Szijjártó took the view that whatever anyone may say about the global migration compact, it is a legally binding document. The words ’commitment’ and ’obligation’ feature in it some eighty times, and it requires every UN member state that signs the document to develop national action plans in the interest of the implementation of the compact.

“We have already seen this film in Europe once before; when the migrant resettlement quotas which started out as voluntary became mandatory”, the Foreign Minister stated.

He added that Hungary took action in good time, left the process of the adoption of the global compact, and decided to regard not a single element of the compact as binding or governing as far as its actions are concerned.

(MTI)