Hungarian Foreign Minister Szijjártó: More people in Europe becoming reasonable about illegal migration

While more and more in Europe are discussing illegal migration with the voice of reason, it is clear that the “Brussels elite” continues to support migration and is trying to put pressure on member states, Péter Szijjártó, the foreign minister, said in Copenhagen on Tuesday.

Szijjártó meets with Morten Messerschmidt

Budapest and Copenhagen share a number of positions concerning illegal migration, “the gravest security challenge facing Europe”, Szijjártó said after talks with the leader of the Danish People’s Party and Denmark’s immigration minister.

“There’s been an intense debate about this in the Western world for 9-10 years now,” Szijjártó said. “It’s clear that some elections are even decided by the issue of migration,” he added, noting that immigration had been a key issue in the US presidential election campaign, “and it was won by the candidate who put his country’s security first and spoke clearly about the dangers of illegal immigration”.

Szijjártó said that the deterioration of Europe’s security situation was clearly linked to “the emergence of mass migrant waves”.

Noting Hungary’s opposition to migration, he said there was “no question in Hungary that the security of the Hungarian people is the number one consideration”.

He noted that the Hungarian government has spent more than 2 billion euros on the protection of the country’s southern border over the last nine years, thwarting some 630,000 illegal entry attempts.

Had Hungary not done this and instead “given in to Brussels, there would be hundreds of thousands or millions more illegal migrants in Europe today”, and Hungarians, too, would have to be living together with them, the minister said.