Hungarian and Latvian Foreign Ministers discussed the need for a border fence

The only effective way to stop illegal migration is to build border fences, Péter Szijjártó, the foreign minister, told a joint press conference held with his Latvian counterpart, Edgars Rinkevic, on Monday.

He added that it was “absurd” that the European Union was still unwilling to finance the operation of Hungary’s border protection efforts.

Szijjártó said the pressure on Europe from the south, south-east and east was “unprecedented”. Now Latvia, Lithuania and Poland are confronted with the same challenges Hungary has been dealing with since 2015, he added.

Without fences, he said, no police or military force would be able to protect hundreds of kilometers of borders.

It was hard to comprehend why the European Commission was “financing everything that increases migration”, he said, rather than finding an effective means to curb it. “It’s like they’re not on this planet”, blocking support for countries that operate fences, he said.

The minister called on the EU to abandon “efforts aimed at altering the composition of Europe’s population”.

Meanwhile, on the subject of EU enlargement, Szijjártó said integration was taking place so slowly that “looking at this honestly, it’s not progressing at all”. Hungary and the bloc’s security and economic interests were not served by thwarting integration, which, he added, was the surest way to achieve stability and peace in the region.