“Brussels is doing everything possible to be one of the frontrunners in the implementation of the UN Global Compact for Migration, but we will prevent this”, Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade Péter Szijjártó said on Hungarian M1 television’s Monday morning current affairs program.
“Last year, the number of illegal border attempts doubled in Spain, 50 percent more illegal immigrants were apprehended in Turkey than in 2017, and the number of people arriving in Cyprus also doubled”, the Minister highlighted. “In addition, the number of people arriving across the Greek-Turkish land border is also continuously increasing”, he added. Mr. Szijjártó said that in his opinion the UN Global Compact for Migration is giving rise to a situation in which global migration processes are gaining new impetus, in view of the fact that the Compact places emphasis on “managing” migration instead of stopping it, which is unacceptable.
“40 UN member states did not vote in favour of the Compact, and for this reason efforts aimed at making the Compact a basis of reference for international law are unacceptable”, the Foreign Minister pointed out. There will be many similar aspirations in Brussels, because the MEPs there regarded it as a loss of prestige that they were “unable to be in the front line of the adoption of the UN Global Compact for Migration” in view of the fact that Hungary made it absolutely clear at the very beginning that there is most certainly no jointly representable European standpoint on the issue”, he explained.
According to Mr. Szijjártó, in compensation for this they will now be doing everything possible to ensure that Brussels is one of the frontrunners in the implementation of the Compact”. “We will of course be preventing this”, he declared. 9 EU member states, i.e. one third of them, did not vote to adopt the Compact, so there is absolutely no question of “some kind of European unified front attempting to achieve the implementation of the package”, he pointed out.
Speaking on Kossuth Radio’s “Good Morning, Hungary!” show, Mr. Szijjártó also spoke about the fact that the Austrian-Hungarian border can be crossed legally at 55 border crossing points, 19 of which are high traffic crossing points and 36 are smaller ones, and Austria has introduced border restrictions at 10 of the latter. “Following negotiations, restrictions have been fully lifted at four locations, and there remain 6 road links at which restrictions are being maintained at the request of local Austrian mayors, but only one of these is a proper tarmacked road, the other five are dirt roads, and negotiations on these borders crossing points are continuing”, he noted.
On the subject of large investment projects, Mr. Szijjártó pointed out that there are huge changes going on within the global economy, and extremely modern technological solutions are now an everyday requirement and the fundamental criteria for success. He said it is very important that the Hungarian economy is being successfully moved to the “next dimension” so that both large international companies and Hungarian enterprises regard Hungary not only as a production location, but primarily as a location for research and development. “And this is indeed the case”, he stated, explaining that last year 98 major investments arrived in Hungary via the investment promotion system with a total value of 1380 billion forints (EUR 4.3bn). “Never before have so many and such a high value of investments arrived in Hungary”, the Minister noted.
Mr. Szijjártó said these investments have created 17 thousand new workplaces with an average salary of 420 thousand forints. “This is 40 percent higher than the average salary at the workplaces created in 2017”, the Minister said, pointing out: “This means that at the workplaces created in Hungary the added value generated, the level of technology represented by these investments, and their research and development content, have increased extremely dynamically in the space of one year”.
(MTI)
