Orban: Hungary should consider letting migrants transit to Western Europe

Brussels, September 24 (MTI) – Hungary will either protect its “green border” with fences or, “if this option is not that popular”, may let migrants pass through in the direction of Austria and Germany, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban said in Brussels in the early hours of Thursday, after attending an emergency summit on migration.

“The Austrian chancellor stated it unambiguously that if we are only able to halt migrants with a fence, we should rather let them through,” Orban told Hungarian reporters. “This is what we will have to consider,” he added.

Orban said the summiteers had come to terms on five of Hungary’s six proposals but failed to agree on the sixth one, namely that Greece should protect its borders in cooperation with the European Union if it is unable to do that alone.

“It is a pity because this was the most important proposal. In this sense, Europe’s external border is still not defended and the migrants breaking international agreements continue to come through Greece,” Orban said.

The participants lacked determination, courage and resolution to take this step, he said.

“I think they did not consider this issue as important as we, Hungarians did,” he said.

Orban outlined the six proposals in Bavaria on Wednesday. In addition to EU control along the Greek border, he proposed separating refugees and economic migrants before they enter the Schengen area and drawing up an EU list of countries considered safe to live in.

Orban proposed that every member state should increase contribution to the EU by 1 percent and cut spending by 1 percent, resulting in 3 billion euros to be spent on refugees.

He also proposed developing a partnership with states whose involvement in handling the migrant crisis is unavoidable, such as Turkey and Russia.

Orban said global quotas should be introduced and all countries in the world should be involved in managing the migrant crisis.

Photo: MTI

Source: http://mtva.hu/hu/hungary-matters