Hungary has no ’emergency plans’ for Brexit

London, April 28 (MTI) – The Hungarian government has not made any “emergency plans” that it could put in place if Britain votes to leave the European Union this summer, the government spokesman said in London late on Wednesday.

Speaking on the sidelines of a logistics security conference, Zoltán Kovács told MTI that the reason why the government would not need to react immediately to Brexit would be because the impact of such a decision would not be felt immediately either.

The government is pondering the possible effects of a Brexit but it will only be able to make concrete plans after the June 23 referendum, Kovács said.

On the subject of Europe’s migrant crisis, he said the fact that Hungary received illegal entrants from over a hundred countries last year demonstrated that the crisis was not a refugee crisis but rather a case of economic migrants from Southeast Asia to South America coming to Europe to make a better living.

The government spokesman said the crisis would also have a serious effect on the continent’s logistics networks.

Citing estimates by the operators of the Channel Tunnel, Kovács said it would not be until late 2017 or 2018 that the tunnel’s services return to normal. The delays stemming from the migrant situation in Calais have resulted in significant losses in revenue for freight and logistics companies that regularly use the tunnel, he said.

Kovács told Britain’s Channel 4 on Wednesday that less than a third of the migrants arriving in Europe claimed to be Syrian. Some 2 million people entered the EU illegally last year, which made it impossible to determine who among them were genuine refugees and who economic migrants, he said.

Source: http://mtva.hu/hu/hungary-matters