“In Hungary we are far from being able to put our minds at rest”

“We are as yet far from being able to put our minds at rest”, the danger posed by the planned reform of the Dublin asylum regulations and the mandatory distribution of asylum-seekers within the European Union is far from over, Szabolcs Takács, Minister of State at the Prime Minister’s Office said on Monday evening in Brussels after he attended the meeting of the Ministers of the Member States of the EU responsible for European affairs.

The Minister of State for European Affairs at the Prime Minister’s Office welcomed the fact that the European Commission seems to have taken the stance that upon the management of the crisis, we must lay a great deal of emphasis on the external dimension of migration.

“We welcome this development because this is what we have been saying for two years now, and finally, the EU, too, is beginning to reach this conclusion”,

Mr Takács told the Hungarian news agency MTI in a telephone interview.

He added at the same time that “we are as yet very far from being able to put our minds at rest” as for instance the European Parliament concluded only last week with a large majority that the EU’s “future asylum system must include a mandatory resettlement regime” which the Hungarian Government finds unacceptable and will reject in the strongest possible terms.

According to the Minister of State, it is also a major problem that at the Tuesday Council meeting

“several Member States suggested that the decision related to mandatory resettlement can also be adopted with a qualified majority”,

despite the fact that “this would be completely contrary to the decision of EU heads of state and government confirmed on multiple occasions based on which only such an asylum regime can be put into place which is acceptable for every Member State”.

Mr Takács finally also found it unacceptable that the Commission “wishes to manage the demographic challenges experienced in Europe by extending encouragement to the legal channels of migration and resettling the nationals of third countries for employment purposes”.

Source: Cabinet Office of the Prime Minister/MTI