“The only thing we now have to find common ground on is that our rejection of all types of mandatory redistribution schemes is ethically and-because of the observance of the Schengen rules and the Lisbon Treatylegally warranted,” Gergely Gulyás told public media.

“We disagree in terms of the mandatory redistribution [of migrants], but this is not a disagreement based on principle but rather one that stems from the differences in our circumstances,” Gulyás said. He said Germany “had acted quite irresponsibly in 2015” by taking in more than one million migrants.

“Now it wants to share the consequences of that decision with others,” he said. Hungary disagrees with this goal, but the two countries do agree, however, that the European Union’s external borders must be protected, Gulyás said.

“Unfortunately we cannot yet see if any sanctions would be imposed on countries that fail to fulfil this duty,” he added. Gulyás said Hungary refuses to accept any policy that approaches the issue of migration from the idea of the mandatory redistribution of migrants.

Hungary believes that the starting point on this issue should be the protection of the bloc’s external borders, because “this is the guarantee that the trouble that came out of the decisions made in 2015 cannot escalate,” he said.

MTI Photo: Máthé Zoltán