Migration top priority for all European countries in EP elections, says Orbán in Translyvania

Migration is a top priority for all European countries in the European parliamentary elections, Prime Minister Viktor Orbán said in Cluj-Napoca (Kolozsvár), in north-western Romania, on Wednesday.

Orbán said a big issue concerning the future is whether divergent opinions on migration can be narrowed and European unity restored.

In a lecture at the Hungarian Sapientia University of Transylvania, the prime minister said policy thinking on migration was divided between Europe’s concept of “how to live together” and central European ideas about what must be done to ensure that “we do not have to live together”.

Orbán said western Europeans wanted to paper over the differences and “let in a large number of migrants” and thereby restore European unity.

“We believe this is a price not worth paying for European unity”, he added.

The prime minister said unfettered migration led to “mixed populations”. According to “liberal doctrines”, the solution is for everyone to leave behind their traditions, he said. The European left “envisions a post-national and post-Christian period”, so it does not want to stop migration, he said, adding that central Europeans “do not want mixed populations” because there are no good examples of it.

“We are going above and beyond in offering help to people in trouble,” he said, noting that whereas Hungarian policies are anti-migration, the idea is that help must be provided at the point where it is needed instead of importing problems.