Election 2018 – Orbán: Migration number one issue

The number one issue at stake in the April general election is whether Hungary will become an “immigrant country” and whether security and European culture and way of life can be preserved, Prime Minister Viktor Orbán said on Sunday.

In an interview to public radio Kossuth, Orbán said that the rise in the threat of terrorism and the deterioration of public safety were linked to migration. He said it was “unacceptable” that migration was threatening equality for women, which he called “one of the cornerstones of European culture”.

Hungary believes that the continent is full, the borders must be protected and migrants should be kept out of Europe, Orbán said. If illegal migration is brought to an end, there will not be any migrants to distribute and the European Union would also rid itself of migrant quotas, the prime minister added.

Orbán said

Brussels wanted to spend a significant portion of EU funds on migrants and under one EU proposal, Hungary would have to take in 10,000 migrants in the first round of their distribution.

The 9 million forints’ (EUR 28,700) worth of financial aid Hungary would be required to distribute per migrant as part of this scheme would spoil the country’s economic achievements, he said. He argued that it was not just for cultural reasons that migrants should not be distributed among EU member states, but also because hosting migrants would be beyond the countries’ economic capacities.

On another subject, Orbán called the result of the recent Italian general election an “important development”, arguing that it meant that the vast majority of voters in one of the EU’s three biggest economies had said no to migration. He said the effect of this would also be felt in the bloc’s capital.

The biggest issue in Europe is therefore migration, he said, adding that the extension of the “censorship of news on migration and terrorism” to the internet was in vain. Orbán said that

Hungary’s opposition parties — which he said were doing the bidding of US financier George Soros — “still insist on not talking about the problem”.

The prime minister said he expects the opposition to field a single candidate against the ruling parties’ MP candidate in each of the electoral districts. He said the opposition was “hiding”, arguing that the “true goals” of the powers behind the opposition were opposed to the will of the Hungarian people. The opposition are hiding “while they have become a part of decision-making centres and are present in Brussels as well”, he insisted.

Orbán said the best way to stand up to the “Soros network” was to expose it. The true goals of the organisations in question should be exposed and after the election they must be made transparent and promoting migration should be banned, he said.

“Instead of trying to change Hungary’s fate, George Soros should go to America,” Orbán said.

He said migrants who enter Hungary could never be deported, adding that this was why Hungary had to be careful “not to respond incorrectly to the issue of migration”. As long as voters put their trust in the current government, “none of this will come to pass”, the prime minister added.

On the subject of the economy, Orbán said full employment in Hungary was within reach. The government has built a new, labour-based economic system and “thanks to the unity of 10 million people, Hungary escaped the clutches of bankruptcy after 2010,” he said.

Photo: MTI

Source: MTI