Fidesz seeks opposition support for asylum amendment proposal

Budapest (MTI) – The ruling Fidesz party has asked opposition parliamentary parties to back the government’s amendment proposals to Hungary’s asylum regulations in the final vote scheduled for Tuesday.

Speaking at a press conference on Sunday, Fidesz deputy group leader Gergely Gulyás noted that the government had submitted a bill to parliament which would prohibit asylum-seekers from leaving the transit zones set up on the border until their cases are ruled on.

The bill also proposes that authorities should be allowed to take illegal migrants back to the transit zones from any given spot of the country, regardless of where they have been apprehended. Under Hungary’s current asylum laws, illegal entrants can only be escorted back if stopped within eight kilometres of the border.

He said there were 80,000-100,000 migrants waiting in the Balkan region to pass through Hungary to travel on to western Europe, adding that this made it all the more important for parliament to pass the amendments. Gulyás argued that tightening Hungary’s asylum regulations would also help protect western Europe.

The deputy group leader said the government still considered Brussels’s migrant quota scheme a flawed policy, especially if its implementation would not be coupled with requiring the protection of the European Union’s external borders.

Source: MTI