Government: Migrant quota referendum question fair, lawful

Budapest, February 26 (MTI) – The government initiative for a referendum on the migrant quota is fair and lawful, Justice Minister László Trócsányi said on Friday.

The referendum initiative announced by Prime Minister Viktor Orbán on Wednesday is based on the principles of democracy because it aims to gauge public opinion, he told a press conference. A referendum is the most powerful tool, it represents even stronger legitimacy than parliament, he added.

The Constitutional Court has already ruled that European Union law is not international law but an internal law within an autonomous system, so putting this question to a referendum does not go against international law, he said. The government’s position is that the EU has not been given the authority to force a country to accept migrants and this is an important question affecting sovereignty, he added.

Relations with EU law and international law are regulated by separate sections in the basic law, which proves that the two are not identical, he said.

Hungary’s interest is to have a strong Europe of nation states based on equal rights to members, with protection for the four basic values and Schengen. At the same time, the member states have never agreed to give up “the essence of their statehood, sovereignty and independence” and they “retain the right to dispose over principles of the constitution that are indispensable for maintaining statehood and constitutional identity”, he added.

Trócsányi said the quota referendum initiative refers to the future and should be handled separately from a lawsuit filed with parliament’s approval last year in which the government maintains that the EU has no authority to impose a quota.