Migrant presence on Hungary-Serbia border growing

Budapest (MTI) – The number of migrants looking to enter Hungary illegally from Serbia is growing once again with police apprehending 110 a day on average over the last ten days, the prime minister’s chief domestic security advisor said on Saturday.

György Bakondi told a press conference that 500 people attempted to cross into Hungary illegally in January while border police apprehended 650 as of February 15.

Bakondi said that the government would be prepared to seal its “green” border with Romania, just as it did on its borders with Serbia and Croatia, if migrants started looking for new routes into Hungary.

He said that over the past few weeks groups of migrants have been arriving on the Hungarian-Serbian-Romanian border, but Romania’s border police have been effective in managing the situation and are keeping Hungary updated on the number of migrants they stop.

Concerning the Balkan route, Bakondi said Greece sees a daily average 1,500-2,000 arrivals, with an approximate total of 30,000 migrants currently in the country, while Macedonia has received around 86,500 refugees in the first two months of the year. Reports coming out of Serbia indicate that the country saw a weekly influx of 16,000 migrants in January and 7,000 in February.

Bakondi noted that recent data from the International Organisation for Migration show that over 110,000 migrants entered Europe as of February 22, most of them through Greece.

Photo: MTI

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