Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán speaks during the meeting in Warsaw Friday. (Photo: Balázs Szecsődi/Prime Ministerʼs Press Office)

Orbán made his comments at a meeting in which the heads of the Visegrad Four countries – Hungary, Czech Republic, Poland and Slovakia – spoke with Merkel as they discussed a common regional stance before joining an informal European Union summit in Bratislava in mid-September.

According to government website kormany.hu, Orbán said at a press conference before the meeting Friday that “the EU has failed to draw the right conclusions from the global financial and economic crisis, and it has failed to respond to migration and terrorism”. He also criticized the EU for failing to protect its Schengen borders in the face of mass migration.

During the meeting Orbán laid out several proposals including:

• making security a priority and establishing a European army;
• making the European Council and the European Commission go back to fulfilling their “original roles”;
• preserving the EUʼs role of overseeing “tried and tested” policies, such as cohesion and agricultural, but not managing migration and social issues at the EU level;
• maintaining EU economic policy that emphasizes fiscal discipline, structural reforms and economic stability.

Source: BBJ

Republished with permission