Brussels abuses its power and wants to turn every country in Europe into an immigrant country at all costs, the Parliamentary State Secretary of the Ministry of Interior said on public M1 television on Friday, 9 June.
On Friday morning, Prime Minister Viktor Orbán also posted a card on social media with the same message.
In the television interview, Bence Rétvári stated that he participated in the Brussels meeting of EU interior ministers, where the legislative proposal for a mechanism that determines how migrants are distributed among EU member states was adopted. According to the politician, this latest proposal is practically the same as the earlier migrant quota, which Brussels already attempted to forced onto member states at one point.
According to Bence Rétvári, the voluntary quota introduced earlier has proved unsuccessful, so Brussels now wants to forcefully distribute migrants. He added that if Hungary refuses to comply, it may face penalties, referred to as ‘financial contributions’ in the proposal. This would mean that the Hungarian government would have to pay
some eight million Hungarian forints per migrant that it refuses to accept.
The state secretary declared: ‘This is an extremely dangerous proposal and it seems to be at an advanced stage, because the fact that the Council of Interior Ministers approved it with a qualified majority means that there will be a subsequent legislative process in the European Parliament and the European Commission.’ He opined that it is also evident that Brussels has found the body where, by abusing its power, this could pass with a majority vote.
He also underscored that the European Council, which represents heads of state and government, should have made a consensus-based decision on the matter. Regarding the voting procedure, he said that the legislative proposal was sent to the stakeholders via email, then distributed on paper after ten minutes, and 20 minutes later, the ministers were already voting on it. According to Bence Rétvári, Brussels does not acknowledge the fact that Hungary protects the Union’s external borders, and it does not want to pay for the cost of the one and a half billion euros that have been incurred by Budapest as a result.
Earlier, on Thursday, reacting to the adopted Council of Ministers position, the state secretary said that Hungary has opposed this proposal throughout, along with Poland.
‘While Hungary is not a frontline country according to European decisions, our country has been burdened with the obligation to perform 28.3 per cent of all border procedures. Hungary has to provide nearly one-third of all European Union border procedure capacities because the Hungarian authorities keep an accurate record of how many illegal migrants they turn back,’ he stated.
Bence Rétvári said that he cannot report on any progress regarding the EU financing of border protection costs, even though Hungary has spent over 1.5 billion euros on building these capacities. The state secretary deemed it inequitable that the position specifies the proportion in which a member states is to bear the costs of border protection or procedures to be carried out at the border. He argued the proposal is dangerous because it contains facilitations and exemptions that will undoubtedly have an incentivizing effect on illegal migration.
He also mentioned that the council position adopted on Thursday was an example of double standards
and a mockery of European values.
He reiterated that according to the Hungarian position, it is the European Council, which brings together the leaders of EU member states, that has the decision-making authority on issues related to asylum reforms, but this was ignored by the Council of Ministers.
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