Hungary continues to support Belgrade in the protection of the borders with a view to curbing illegal immigration, and is ready to help the Balkans country with information, personnel and legal advice not only on the Hungarian border section, but also on its joint border sections with Bulgaria and Macedonia, Interior Minister Sándor Pintér said in Hajdújárás in Vojvodina after he met with his Serbian counterpart Nebojsa Stefanovic.

The two Ministers reviewed the security situation of Serbia and Hungary, with special regard to the pressure of migration weighing upon them. They agreed to work out proposals which may permit both the European Union and the neighbouring countries to manage the migrant crisis.

Mr Pintér highlighted that, according to the Hungarian position, the European Union and the external borders of the EU must be protected. The migrants who are currently staying on the territory of Serbia and Macedonia entered these countries illegally, and therefore the number one task is the protection of the borders, with which Hungary is happy to help Serbia. As soon as the issue of border protection is resolved, the Interior Minister continued, the long lines of people waiting in the transit zones at the Serbian-Hungarian border will come to an end.

In answer to a journalist’s question, Mr Pintér said: there is no scope for increasing the daily number of asylum requests accepted for further processing. As he pointed out, those have a chance of entering Hungary who qualify as genuine refugees, while those who do not qualify as such under the Geneva Convention have no chance at all of a positive assessment.

Serbian Interior Minister Nebojsa Stefanovic drew attention to the fact that the Hungarian and Serbian police forces have been engaged in effective cooperation in the past one year. It is now the task of the Serbian police to reinforce the protection of the Serbian external borders, and Hungary immediately offered its assistance with this as well, he added.

Reinforced border protection is a message at the same time: Serbia does not tolerate people smuggling, and illegal border-crossing, whether into or out of the country.

According to the Serbian Interior Minister, the various readmission and expulsion agreements are additionally also of great importance as they may help manage the pressure weighing upon Serbia and the European Union. If the expulsion agreements are observed, it will be possible to send more and more people back to their countries of origin, or to the country where they came from before arriving in Serbia.

An important issue of the meeting was as to how the migrants waiting at the Serbian-Hungarian border could be convinced not to wait in the border zones, but to move to the reception centres, and to await the assessment of their applications there. Many of them believe today that if they wait at the border, they may gain admission to Hungary more rapidly.

Nebojsa Stefanovic highlighted that from among the neighbouring countries, only Hungary takes in a certain number of migrants. He added: he has no exact data as to the number of people that have transited Serbia this year, but there are a little more than four thousand migrants in the territory of the country at present.

(MTI)