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.