In the context of immigration, one of the important elements of the proposed amendment of the Fundamental Law submitted to Parliament is that no one should be allowed to decide on such issues without Parliament’s consent, and no one should be allowed to determine who may live in our country, Pál Völner, Parliamentary State Secretary of the Ministry of Justice said in an interview given to the newspaper Magyar Idők on 31 May 2018.

He pointed out that the most important goal is to protect the country’s sovereignty.

The Fundamental Law will lay down regarding asylum proceedings and the Geneva Conventions that Hungary is only prepared to grant asylum as a first safe country. “Meaning that we will not assume the obligations of this nature of other countries”, Mr Völner said in the interview released on Thursday.

He confirmed that, by virtue of the amendment, the Fundamental Law would also provide for the possibility of setting up an administrative high court. He added that the details would only be presented to the House later on, after a series of professional consultations. This high court would be at the top of the hierarchy of administrative and labour courts as in other EU countries, he explained.

The Parliamentary State Secretary also spoke about the infringement procedures instituted by the European Commission against Hungary. He said the government maintains its position concerning organisations funded from the abroad that there is a need for transparency. Regarding the CEU case, he highlighted: “Members of the public may still not be fully aware that Central European University and Közép-európai Egyetem are not one and the same institution, even if their names are the same; they are in fact two institutions. One of them complies with the regulations, while the accreditation of the other one is currently being examined”. “We merely require everyone to observe the rules,” he added.

(MTI)