Minister: Gunfire regular at Hungary’s borders

Illegal migrants and people smugglers “are not only shooting at each other but at Hungarian border guards too”, Foreign Minister Péter Szijjártó said in Geneva on Thursday, urging the international community “to focus on removing the causes of illegal migration rather than promoting it”.

The foreign ministry quoted Szijjártó as saying in a panel discussion of the International Organisation for Migration that Hungary had registered a total 275,000 illegal entry attempts last year and some 155,000 since the beginning of this year. He said the migrants were “extraordinarily aggressive”, adding that “finally we must make it clear that such behaviour cannot be tolerated”.

Szijjártó said IOM could serve as a “platform for sensible dialogue” as opposed to “the dispute in Brussels in which migration is promoted and the business model of human smuggling is encouraged”. The European Union “is in fact a magnet” for illegal migration, he said. Rather than promoting it, “we should at last address its causes” such as economic challenges, armed conflicts, problems with food and water supplies, and climate change, Szijjártó said.

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“Where there is war, we must make peace. Where there is an economic crisis, we must launch development programmes. Where there is a food or water shortage, we must provide supplies,” he said. He also urged global cooperation to fight climate change, adding that “the Hungarian government considers the cause of preserving the Earth as it is for the next generations more as a practical rather than a political issue.”

Hungary continues to support developing countries in the form of tied aid loans, scholarships and development subsidies to help those countries modernise their economies and reduce emissions, Szijjártó added.