Minister: EU migration policy risk lives, pays people smugglers

Foreign Minister Péter Szijjártó on Monday called for changes to the European Union’s migration policy, saying that it encouraged people to “risk their lives and pay people smugglers thousands of dollars to come to Europe.”

Szijjártó held talks with Austrian officials in Vienna, including Harald Mahrer, head of the Austrian Economic Chamber, Gerd Mueller, head of the United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO), and Michael Spindelegger, director-general of the International Centre for Migration Policy Development.

Szijjártó said migration was a “hard topic to conduct talks on rationally”, according to a foreign ministry statement. “Most discussions are ideological or emotional,” Szijjártó said. However, the EU should turns around its pro-migration policy as a matter of priority, Szijjártó said. “We should make it clear that the only way to come to Europe is legally … and illegal migrants will not be allowed in.”

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Szijjártó said people smugglers “sometimes pretend to be NGOs”. The civil organisations running rescue ships on the Mediterranean “are basically gangs of people smugglers trying to pressure European countries into accepting illegal migrants from God knows where.”