An international conference on migration will be held in Budapest this week. The two-day event is being organised by the Hanns Seidel Foundation and the Hungarian Society of Policing Studies in cooperation with the Office of Immigration and Nationality.

At the conference entitled „Alternative solutions to the management of the migration crisis. Does the Common European Asylum System work?” local and international experts and lecturers will debate the migrant crisis and its experiences to date.

The conference will be opened by Zsuzsanna Végh, Director General of the Office of Immigration and Nationality. The lecturers will evaluate, inter alia, the migrant situation, the EU-Turkey agreement, the security risks of immigration, the protection of the Schengen borders, the measures adopted by EU Member States and the Brussels immigration policy. The representative of Frontex, the European border controls agency will deliver a lecture on the experiences of border protection by sea, and lecturers from Macedonia, Sweden and Turkey will also speak at the conference. The Hungarian Government will be represented by György Bakondi, the Prime Minister’s chief advisor for internal security.

The pressure of migration continues to remain significant. Last year 1.5 million to 2 million migrants came to Europe, while this year more than 210,000 migrants have arrived. Most of them are economic migrants, and more and more of them are coming from Africa. Due to mass migration, the threat of terrorism has increased in Europe, public security has deteriorated, there are growing cultural, economic and social tensions, and European citizens are increasingly concerned. Hungary has pursued a consistent immigration policy right from the beginning, protects Europe’s Schengen borders, separates refugees from economic migrants, says no to the forced settlement quotas, and has developed an action plan under the title Schengen 2.0 with a view to encouraging a change of paradigm in Brussels’ immigration policy.

(Ministry of Interior)