György Bakondi said that in the first quarter of the year, 4,500 migrants had tried to break through the Hungarian border and in the second quarter this had risen to 10,500.

If the pressure grows even further then the situation “will be complicated in the Balkans and in the whole of the European Union,” Bakondi told news channel M1.

More and more people are of the opinion that Europe is not able to handle mass migration on such a scale, and they believe that national governments and Brussels should be taking resolute steps to protect the bloc, he said, referring to violent episodes in Hungarian migrant reception centres and terrorist attacks in other European countries.

Bakondi said he hoped that the European Union would be able to work out a security system that enables real refugees to gain political asylum while keeping terrorists and economic migrants at bay.

Republished with permission of Hungary Matters, MTI’s daily newsletter.

MTI photo: Molnár Edvárd