Hungarian Foreign Minister: EU leaders are making the same mistakes as in 2015

At a “serious and at times tough” debate on the situation in Afghanistan, the Brussels institutions and certain member states reverted to the “2015 track” in handling migration at an informal meeting of EU foreign ministers, Foreign Minister Péter Szijjártó said on Friday.

Speaking on the sidelines of the meeting in Brdo pri Kranju, in Slovenia,

Szijjártó lambasted EU leaders for “slipping back onto the path of 2015, even though there is constant talk of not repeating the mistakes of the 2015 migration crisis,” he said.

The ministers also discussed issuing a call on the Taliban to allow free passage to those who want to leave the country. This, he insisted, was “in fact an invitation to any Afghan that wants to leave”. He warned that it was a “very dangerous, irresponsible position” and argued that half of

Afghanistan’s population of 39 million had lived on humanitarian aid even before the Taliban took over, while the country has at least 4 million domestic refugees, which could trigger another wave of mass migration.

He added, however, that the Czech Republic, Poland, Croatia and Hungary had “rather firmly argued against migration”.