Szigetvári proposed that the EU should be reformed to create a stronger union that can prevent “short-sighted and demagogic” national interests from causing damage to the bloc. Such a reform could strengthen the legitimacy of today’s “weak” administration in Brussels, he said.

The reform of the bloc would also have to include stronger border protection, a common system of assessing asylum requests as well as a common, quota-based migrant redistribution mechanism, Szigetvári said. Orbán continues to give ambiguous responses on the latter subject, he added.

Orbán said his proposal was compiled in the wake of an “illconsidered” European Commission proposal to manage the migration crisis.

Csaba Dömötör, state secretary at the prime minister’s cabinet office, said the proposal says that Schengen and Dublin regulations should be properly enforced, and that refugee procedures should be conducted outside the EU, at “closed and guarded hotspots”, while the EU should provide financing to establishing appropriate facilities.

Illegal entrants should be sent back to safe transit countries or countries of origin, in cooperation with those countries.

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MTI photo: Rosta Tibor