The movement of illegal migrants is intensifying on the Balkans route, the Chief Security Advisor to the Prime Minister stressed on the Wednesday evening programme of the public service television news channel M1.

György Bakondi added that – with the active involvement of people smugglers – they are arriving in ever larger numbers by road, rail and also on foot. These numbers pose a significant security challenge and threat, he pointed out.

At the Hungarian borders, so far this year the authorities have registered almost 15,000 border crossing attempts. The number of apprehended people smugglers currently stands at 170. This number was 150 during the whole year last year, he observed.

Mr Bakondi also said that though “at times they deny it, while at other times they call it by different names,” ever since 2015 the mandatory distribution of illegal migrants on the basis of quotas has been a recurring theme in Europe. He observed that most recently, in addition to the countries of the Visegrád cooperation (Hungary, Poland, Slovakia and the Czech Republic), Estonia, Latvia and Slovenia had also voted against the plan. He added that he sincerely hopes that the minority standing against the proposal will block the policy which poses a threat to Hungary and is contrary to the Hungarian government’s migration policy.

On Kossuth Radio’s programme ‘Good morning, Hungary’, the chief security advisor also observed that the concepts of organisations financed by George Soros are often presented as EU proposals within just days.

At the same time, he drew attention to the fact that in consequence of the coronavirus epidemic, hundreds of thousands of people have lost their jobs. Also in response to this, plans for the legalisation of illegal migration enjoy less and less social support, Mr Bakondi said.

(Cabinet Office of the Prime Minister/MTI)