PM Orbán: No Deal With Germany On Migrants Reached
- 2 Jul 2018 2:15 PM
- Hungary Matters
Hungary’s prime minister has dismissed a report that Hungary was part of a group of 14 countries which were ready to sign a deal with Germany on speeding up the readmittance process of asylum seekers deported from Germany.
Orbán told MTI on Saturday that the report was “the usual political bluff” and no such agreement had been reached. German Chancellor Angela Merkel is said to have outlined a number of measures related to illegal migrants, and Hungary, Poland and the Czech Republic are supposed to be among 14 countries ready to sign an agreement alongside Belgium, France, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Lithuania, Latvia, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Portugal and Sweden.
The bilateral agreements would facilitate the return process for asylum seekers who have previously been registered in other countries.
Bertalan Havasi, Orbán’s press chief, told MTI that Hungary’s standpoint had remained unchanged since 2015, namely that not a single asylum seeker can enter Hungary after having set foot in Greece or another EU member state.
In an interview to public radio, Péter Szijjártó, the foreign minister, said an imminent meeting between Orbán and Merkel would be of “exceptional significance”. He noted that Germany is Hungary’s biggest economic partner.
The performance of Hungary’s economy is fundamentally determined by its ties to Germany, he said, adding that the European political situation related to migration increased the significance of this kind of meeting.
MTI Photo: Szecsődi Balázs
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