Brussels wants to force Hungary to accept 7,000 migrants a year, Zsigmond said, noting the European Commission’s recently issued implementing decision on capacity for asylum procedures under the new migration pact.

The decision requires Hungary to provide 7,716 permanent reception places, 25.7% of the total, while it must undertake over 15,000 border procedures in the first year, he said. The number of procedures could rise to three or four times the number of reception places in the following years, he added.

He said Hungary’s quota was a multiple of the French or German quotas and even more than those in Bulgaria and Greece, along the Western Balkans migrant route.

“It is unacceptable and completely irrational that just two member states, Hungary and Italy, should be responsible for over half of the reception capacity on the EU frontiers,” he added.

He said the quotas were based on statistics showing illegal migration over the past three years, adding that the formula “punished” member states that had protected their border from illegal migrants and reported their numbers to the EU.

He said the measure was a “cynical attempt by the pro-war, Sorosist left-wing in Brussels” to keep politically motivated migration processes in place, and he affirmed Hungary’s position on protecting its borders.

“We will not allow Hungary to become a country of migrants,” he said.

Hungary Punished 'To Force It Into Line & Let Migrants In', Declares Gov't Official

Hungary is being punished to force it “to toe the line and let migrants in”, an interior ministry official told public radio.

Hungary will continue to protect the EU’s external borders, state secretary Bence Rétvári said, adding that the country “does not accept” the European Court of Justice ruling against Hungary for actions taken against migration.

“The ruling is clearly not a legal decision but the exertion of political pressure,” he said.

“They imposed a record fine seventy times the amount originally requested in the petition, to force Hungary to let illegal migrants into the country and to toe the line of [those countries] which voted for the migration pact, which means the automatic acceptance and resettlement of illegal migrants.”

“Hungary will not budge”, however, no matter the pressure, and will stick to its stance on the protection of the southern border, too, Rétvári said, calling the fine “entirely illegitimate and unfounded” and vowing that Hungary “will not pay it”.

He said migration posed an “unprecedented” threat to European public safety, adding that it was being organised “by the same circles that earlier profited hugely from drug and arms trafficking, and prostitution”.

He said people smuggling was even more lucrative, adding that in Sweden “a knife-attack or explosion takes place every second day, organised by criminal gangs which are now getting most of their money and new recruits thanks to illegal migration.”

Rétvári said some 2,000 people had fallen victim to terrorism in Europe in the past decade. “It is nonsense that Hungary is being penalised for protecting their security.”

He called the 80 billion forint (EUR 200m) fine — with a further 400 million (EUR 1m) forints to be paid for every day of non-compliance — “racketeering”.

“Brussels wants to strip member states of their ability to protect themselves,” he said. Hungary should be reimbursed, not punished, for the wages of police deployed at the border and for building the fence which “protects our southern border, the external border of the union”.

He said “Brussels bureaucrats” expected police to help migrants, “who arrive in large groups, often armed with knives”, to submit their asylum requests “instead of protecting the border”.

Hungary “will not support migration or enter the ranks of pro-war countries”, he said. Hungarians “have expressed their will for illegal migration to be stopped at the southern border”, he added.

Since 2015, the country had shown that the border could be protected and migration stopped, he said. Hungarian police “are working effectively at Serbia’s southern border, too, alongside Austrian officers,” he said.

Meanwhile, many Western European politicians, he said, saw migration as a “logistical problem”. This attitude, he added, put the decision as to who and how many enter Europe into the hands of people smugglers.

Rétvári said the new arrivals sent the subsidies received to their home country to support others in coming to Europe.

“Western European subsidies thus land in the pockets of people smugglers… That’s how public safety deteriorates year after year in European metropolises,” he said.

Meanwhile, EU Cohesion Policy 'Under Comprehensive Attack' Says Bóka

The European Union’s current cohesion policy is under a “comprehensive attack of elemental strength”, with the European Commission working to ensure that the policy cease to exist in its current form in the next seven-year financial cycle, the EU affairs minister told a panel discussion.

Speaking at the MCC Feszt festival organised by the Matthias Corvinus Collegium in Esztergom, in northern Hungary, János Bóka said “the EC is proposing unified payment packages which member states could in theory use more freely, but will only be accessible if there is a reform programme approved by the EC and if the EU’s financial interests are fully protected.”

Such a programme “would practically strip member states from their budgetary and economic policy tools; could only be implemented through the joint programme approved by the Commission,” Bóka said.

MTI Stock Photo - for illustrative purposes only

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