Orbán cabinet: EU-Africa deal should help repatriate migrants

Hungary will only support an agreement between the European Union and Africa that provides an effective mechanism for repatriating migrants and helps Africa retain its population, Foreign Minister Péter Szijjártó told MTI in Brussels on Monday.

Following a meeting with his EU counterparts, Szijjártó said the meeting had shown that “pro-migration forces are again in full swing”.

Referring to discussions at the meeting on the 2000 ACP-EU agreement, Szijjártó said that “it is clear that the African side and several EU members, together with the European Commission, seek to amend that deal with components promoting migration, highlighting its positive effects”.

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Hungary believes Africa should be supported in a way that allows the continent’s rapidly growing population to prosper in their homelands, so that setting off for Europe is not their only option, the minister said.

Hungary will not support the document if it includes any references to the UN’s global migration and asylum compacts, he said, insisting that those documents were “still stealthily being forced” into international law.

Because Hungary believes in providing help at the location where it is needed, the government has contributed 7 billion forints (EUR 20.9m) to job-creation schemes, water management and hygiene services in Africa so far this year, Szijjártó said. It has increased its combined support for Southeast Asian countries to more than 10 billion forints and is carrying out an 8 billion forint development scheme in the Middle East that will enable and entice the locals to remain in their homeland.

Meanwhile, Szijjártó said

the migration situation in the Western Balkans was becoming increasingly severe, with more than 400,000 people having entered Turkey illegally by mid-November.

This is 128,000 more than the total number of illegal entries recorded last year, the minister noted, adding that Serbia has also seen its number of illegal entrants double compared with 2018.

Source: mti