Hungary border control

Smuggler who shot at border guards near Austria had mafia relations!

He wanted to ignore the soldiers at first, then he shot at them while running away. He can face up to 15 years in prison.

The Moldovan human trafficker

The human trafficker, who brought illegal migrants from the southern border of Hungary to the border of Austria, was a 25-year-old Moldovan man, it seems to be confirmed that he received his order from the human-trafficking mafia. The 25-year-old man tried to break into Austria on Sunday, driving his car ignoring the signs of the soldiers, and then when he understood it would not work out, he got out of his car, started running towards Hungary, and shot twice at the Austrian soldiers, says magyarnemzet.hu. He was arrested by the Hungarian police in the border town of Körmend.

The court case has begun

The 25-year-old Moldovan man is suspected of human trafficking. The Austrian authorities are investigating the violent acts he committed against their officials. In accordance with the Unity Convention, the Austrians will most probably offer to start the case to the Hungarian judicial authorities, as the man was arrested on the Hungarian side.

The 25-year-old Moldovan, along with two compatriots – two men, aged 22 and 26 -, was arrested on January 19 in Körmend, driving an Audi with a Hungarian license plate. His companions were also arrested for helping with human trafficking. The 25-year-old man went to Austria on January 16 with his van crossing the Szentpéterfa / Monyorókerék (Eberau) border, with 12 illegal migrants and a Moldovan helper in his van. The Austrian soldiers tried to stop him, then he drove over the feet of one Austrian soldier. He still got stuck with his vehicle between the soldiers later, so he jumped out and ran back to Hungary while shooting at the Austrian soldiers twice. His accomplice and the illegal migrants were captured by the Austrians.

Criminal proceedings have been initiated in Austria against the shooter for violence against an official, which is expected to be handed over to the Hungarian authorities where they could be joined with human trafficking proceedings. The latter is normally punishable by one to five years’ imprisonment, but if the crime is stopped, and the violence against an official is punishable, it can be punishable by up to 15 years.

Vienna located smuggler mafia

The suspicion of a criminal organisation is already based on the fact that two of his accomplices, who were suspected of supporting the crime, assisted in human trafficking, but there are far more compelling arguments for the aggravating circumstance. According to some  information, the Moldovans smuggling in the Austro-Hungarian border area work for human trafficking gangs operating in Vienna, typically organised by Syrians, Afghans, Iraqis, Pakistanis, Turks, or Bangladeshi people, says origo.hu.

Joint actions of Austro-Hungarian team

The shooter was relatively easy to identify, his captured accomplice told the police who he was at the first request, and since he was on the Austrian records as he had a criminal past, a photo of him was also found just in a few minutes. The joint Austro-Hungarian investigation team in Nickeldorf is in constant contact regarding information about the human traffickers.

The situation in Serbia does not seem easy

According to information from the Hungarian police, Syrian, Afghan, and Turkish smugglers have established their control all over Serbia. These gangs have fought a bloody battle over the division of territory.

Here, you can see a video where the local field guards of Ásotthalom are looking for illegal migrants on the Hungarian-Serbian border:

Toroczkai and his crew
Read alsoArmed migrant hunters on the Hungarian border?

Manhunt ended near the Austrian border!

TEK
Hungarian police on Wednesday morning apprehended a suspected people smuggler, a Moldovan national, who had fired shots at an Austrian police officer while fleeing a border check earlier this week, the police said on their website.
 
The 25-year-old man was one of the three passengers travelling in a Hungarian registered car which was stopped in Körmend near the Austrian border, the police said in a statement.
 
Notified by Austrian authorities, Hungary’s Vas County police and counterterrorism (TEK) force launched a manhunt for the suspect on Tuesday morning in the area of Szentpeterfa, near the border, where the man was believed to be hiding after fleeing Austrian border guards. The Moldovan is suspected of attempting to smuggle a group of illegal migrants to Austria.
 
 
According to Austrian press reports,
 
the Moldovan fired shots at the Austrian police near the Eberau border crossing.
 
Featured image: illustration
Read also Here is what you receive for trafficking 20 migrants in Hungary

Hungary and Austria agreed to set up a joint criminal investigation unit

Pintér austria

Hungary and Austria have agreed to set up a joint criminal investigation unit, organise joint patrols and expand information sharing on criminal cases, Interior Minister Sándor Pintér said after talks with his Austrian counterpart in Budapest on Tuesday.

Hungary and Austria are both working to guarantee the security of their countries and safety of their citizens, Pintér told a joint press conference with Gerhard Karner.

Pintér thanked Karner for Austria’s assistance in the protection of the European Union’s external borders.

He said they were also in agreement that ensuring Europe’s security required more than just border protection. The two countries have therefore also agreed to participate in police operations in the Balkan region that will ensure Hungary and Austria’s security.

Pintér said he and Karner had also discussed bilateral cooperation in the response to the pandemic, adding that they had promised to continue taking into consideration new information about the pandemic when coordinating their border activities.

Karner said

his visit to Hungary was his first international trip since taking office last month, adding that this was a sign of strong bilateral cooperation.

He said they had agreed to intensify their efforts against organised crime, specifically human smuggling and trafficking.

The minister added that

Austria and Hungary expected the European Commission to strengthen the protection of the bloc’s borders.

Meanwhile, in response to a question concerning Monday’s shooting incident on the Hungary-Austria border, Pintér said the authorities had identified and would catch the suspect who allegedly fired shots at Austrian border authorities.

police car siren
Read alsoShocking: shooting at the Hungarian-Austrian border

Breaking – human smuggler fired on police at the Hungarian-Austrian border!

Police-crime-migrants-Szentpeterfa-TEK-dead-body

Agents of the Counter-Terrorism Centre are already in Szentpéterfa, where the shooting happened earlier today. 

According to vaol.hu, the news portal of Vas county, there are a lot of police units in Szentpéterfa, a small Hungarian village just metres away from the Hungarian-Austrian border. They wrote that a human smuggler opened fire on Austrian border guards from the Hungarian side. Then he escaped and tried to hide in a former border guard barrack nearby. The officers of the Counter-Terrorism Centre surrounded the building. A couple of minutes later, their Austrian colleagues sent a drone to help. Based on unconfirmed information, the smuggler is not alone. 

Afterwards, police caught a Moldavian human smuggler in the village. Officers found 14 people in his van, who claimed to be Syrian refugees. To sum up, there are two cases. One of them is already solved, while the other is still going on.

szentpéterfa_border_crossing
Szentpéterfa border crossing. The other side is Austria. Photo: PrtScr/Google Maps

Regarding the latter issue, local police issued a statement a couple of hours ago. They said that the Syrians could not provide any documents proving their national identity or citizenship. However, they could not demonstrate the legality of their stay in Hungary. As a result,

police will escort them to the border fence. Meanwhile, the Moldavian citizen will be brought to court for human trafficking.

Regarding the former issue, vaol.hu wrote that Hungarian police officers wanted to check a vehicle at the border of Szentpéterfa. However, the driver escaped and opened fire on an Austrian border guard. Thus, the Counter-Terrorism Centre swarmed the village with police officers.

According to Blikk, the perpetrator(s) barricaded themselves in a former Hungarian border guard barrack. They added that the human smuggler first drove to Austria. However,

Austrian police officers caught him and wanted to check his car. That is when he opened fire and went back to the Hungarian side. 

The spokesman of the Austrian Army, Michael Bauer, wrote on Twitter that the driver of a bus refused military check and a soldier suffered light injuries. They went after him, but he drove back to Hungary. A couple of shots were fired during the pursuit in the Austrian side but nobody suffered an injury.

 Featured image: illustration

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Chief security advisor: Number of illegal entry attempts up in January

Migration Migráció Bevándorlás Border Határ

Hungarian border police have stopped 4,200 migrants who attempted to illegally enter the country since January 1, 1,000 more than during the first two weeks of last year, the prime minister’s chief security advisor said on Friday evening.

Most of them are helped by people smugglers, but there have been instances when the migrants made attempts in groups of 40 or 50 on their own, György Bakondi told public news television M1.

“The attempts during the past two weeks have been aggressive and more frequently carried out in groups,” he said.

read also: Here is what you receive for trafficking 20 migrants in Hungary

He noted that under a recent interior ministry agreement, Hungarian and Serbian guards organised joint patrols on both sides of the border over the past month.

Citing data by the EU’s border agency Frontex, Bakondi said the most common routes to reach Europe are through Italy and Spain and used mainly by African migrants.

Toroczkai and his crew
Read alsoArmed migrant hunters on the Hungarian border?

Armed migrant hunters on the Hungarian border?

Toroczkai and his crew

The local mayor and field guards are hunting for migrants during the evenings in a small town called Ásotthalom.

Toroczkai saw armed migrants as well

“SHOCKING: Armed migrants on the Hungarian border!” László Toroczkai, President of the Mi Hazánk Mozgalom (Our Country Movement), published a video on his Facebook page.

The video shows people climbing over a fence, one of them holding a rifle in his hand. According to Toroczkai, this video was made on the southern border at Ásotthalom where he is the mayor.

(this part starts at 00:58 in the video)

Read more: Police discovered 97 migrants in a Romanian truck

Conflict with Freedom Rights activists

In the video, Toroczkai first accuses the government of deliberately arresting illegal border crossers only later, saying that the government will not act because it would be bad in the election campaign period if it turns out they cannot protect the border, summarises 444.hu.

He then goes on to say that the Society for Freedom Rights (Társaság a Szabadságjogokért – TASZ) reported the Ásotthalom field guard to the state police, so the police also invited two of their subordinates for questioning. According to Toroczkai, the field guards employed by the municipality have the right to take action against “migrant criminals who cause damage to our forests, damage to our homesteads, damage to the border fence itself”. Therefore, if Mi Hazánk, his party, is elected to Parliament, it would mean the end of TASZ, says the politician in the video.

TASZ told 444.hu that they did not actually file a complaint but asked the government office and the police to investigate whether the Ásotthalom field guard was operating legally.

László Toroczkai, leader of Mi Hazánk Mozgalom and the mayor of Ásotthalom
László Toroczkai, leader of Mi Hazánk Mozgalom and the mayor of Ásotthalom
Photo: Facebook

Previous actions of Toroczkai on video

In a video published earlier in the autumn entitled “HUNTING ON THE BORDER AFTER THE ATTACKS”, Toroczkai showed and described in detail how the field guard works “during deployment”. They appear to be looking for traces of illegal migrants in the woods at night, armed, and the municipal surveillance camera system is also used for this purpose. It is claimed the field guard has been performing this task for years, and thousands of people have been captured.

However, according to TASZ, the job of field guards is to protect the arable land, the machines, buildings, and values there. “If they hit someone in action as they damage or set fire to a straw storage building, for example, they have the right to take action. They can prevent the crime and notify the authorities. But they do not have any authority to perform law enforcement and border protection tasks in an organised manner,” said Erna Landgraf, an employee of TASZ.

According to her, they are actively searching for these people and trying to arrest and intimidate them, for which they have no right.

In the end, the police did actually assess the public interest report of TASZ and initiated proceedings for “unauthorised performance of public safety activities”. TASZ received a response from the government office that they would investigate the activities of the field guard and the local government but were also waiting for the position of the police.

Gergely Gulyás Hungarian Top Court Migration Laws
Read alsoPM chief of staff: Top court strengthened Hungarian migration policy

Here is what you receive for trafficking 20 migrants in Hungary

A court in Szolnok, in central Hungary, has sentenced a Romanian national to three years and 10 months in prison for attempting to traffic twenty Syrian migrants in his lorry across the Hungarian-Austrian border last January. The ruling is subject to appeal.
 
The court also ordered the man in his thirties with a criminal record to be expelled from the country for a period of at least 7 years and 8 months. On January 29, 2021, National Tax and Customs Office police made the arrest on the outskirts of Szolnok. The driver attempted to flee, but was captured and detained.
 
At Wednesday’s preparatory hearing, the accused confessed to the crime and waived his right to a trial. Both the public prosecutor and the defence have decided to appeal, however,
 
the latter seeking a lighter sentence.
 
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Shocking: shooting at the Hungarian-Austrian border

police car siren

As Helló Magyar wrote, there was a shooting yesterday afternoon at the Harka crossing point on the Hungarian-Austrian border. The police wanted to check a van, but the driver tried to hit the patrol officer to avoid being checked, police.hu reported.

Early Thursday afternoon, border control officers spotted a vehicle with Lithuanian licence plates. Due to the suspicious behaviour of the driver and the passengers, officers suspected that they might be members of a human trafficking gang, Helló Magyar wrote.

They informed their colleagues on the Hungarian side, alerting them to be more vigilant. The result of this was that soon afterwards, they spotted the van they wanted to check.

The driver did not stop

One of the officers, as usual, stepped out onto the road and ordered the driver of the van to stop. However, the driver, increasing his speed, steered the vehicle towards the officer and tried to run him over.

Fortunately, he was able to jump out of the way in time. In the meantime, his partner, noticing the incident, drew his service weapon and fired several shots at the van. But the vehicle did not stop, and it drove across the border.

The bullets probably caused the van to become inoperable and stop after crossing the border. The Hungarian police informed their Austrian counterparts, who arrived at the scene and checked the vehicle.

hungarian austrian border van
The van caught at the Hungarian-Austrian border, source: police.hu

Suspicions were confirmed

The investigation revealed that the officers’ suspicions were not unfounded. Thirty people of unknown nationality were travelling in the cargo hold of the van, which was otherwise registered in Hungary.

The authorities took both the passengers and the Egyptian driver to the authorities and have started an investigation. No one was injured during the incident.

The offence of human trafficking is punished by imprisonment of between one and five years but may increase to five to fifteen years in aggravated cases.

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Border police apprehends nearly 122,000 violators in 2021

Hungary Border Fence Migration Illegal
The Hungarian authorities apprehended nearly 122,000 illegal entrants and over 1,200 people smugglers last year, György Bakondi, chief security advisor to the prime minister, told public broadcaster Kossuth Rádió on Wednesday.
 
Bakondi noted 45,000 entered Hungary illegally in 2020. In the first days of January alone, 860 border violators have been detained, he said.
 
“Migration routes into Europe continue to be busy,”
 
Bakondi said, adding that “the countries protecting the European Union’s external borders” were under enormous pressure.
 
In 2021 a new migration route via Belarus and Poland emerged, he noted, calling this “a grave development”. He also warned that many
 
Afghan, Indian, and Pakistani migrants were on their way to Europe via Turkey.
orbán
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Fidesz MEP: Márki-Zay and Gyurcsány ‘in full agreement’ despite ‘show of divisions’

Márki-Zay Prime Ministerial Candidate

Péter Márki-Zay, the prime ministerial candidate of the opposition, is in full ideological agreement with Democratic Coalition head Ferenc Gyurcsány, despite the “arguments put on for show”, Gergely Gulyás, the prime minister’s chief of staff, said on Friday.

Gulyás told an interview published on the atv.hu website that the government offered to continue implementing its achievements so far if elected in the general election in the spring.

Those measures include utility price cuts, rejecting migration and strengthening border protection, new jobs and a work-based economy, he said.

read also: Opposition parties promises wage hikes for Hungarian teachers

Regarding the “basically symbiotic unity” between Márki-Zay and Gyurcsány, Gulyás said the former “opposes the utility price cuts and wants an inclusive society,” and the latter “would demolish the [border] fence.”

When he was in power as a Socialist Party prime minister between 2004 and 2009, Gyurcsány also doubled electricity prices and tripled gas prices, he said.

read also: Despite pre-election government spendings public debt to decline?

Meanwhile, the minimum wage, “which hardly increased under left-wing governments”, was hiked to 200,000 forints (EUR 540) under Fidesz from 73,500 forints in 2010, he said.

At the general election next spring, Fidesz would need 100 seats in parliament to have a majority, Gulyás said. “That’s what we’d like to achieve. Anything above that is God’s gift, a bonus,” he added.

márki-zay atv
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50 Turkish policemen will join the border protection in Hungary

Police Special Forces

Interior Minister Sándor Pintér and his Turkish counterpart, Suleyman Soylu, on Friday signed a cooperation agreement on Turkish police forces aiding Hungarian border protection efforts.

At an event after the signing ceremony, Pintér and Soylu welcomed the other country’s policemen in their native languages.

The ministry said the 50 Turkish policemen would serve at Röszke and Nagylak, on the Serbian and Romanian border, respectively.

Pintér said that talks of the border cooperation started in November, at an inter-governmental meeting of the Hungarian-Turkish high-level strategic cooperation council. Pintér and Soylu then agreed that stopping illegal migration, fighting people smuggling and reinforcing border security was a common duty, he said.

Therefore, Soylu proposed to send Turkish units to cooperate at the Hungarian borders, he said.

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Hungarian troops will thus be able to use the experience of Turkish officers in handling illegal migration at Turkey’s eastern borders, he said. The cooperation will also boost the fight against cross-border crime, he said.

Hungary and Turkey will also exchange technological know-how on the fight against cybercrime and drug-related crimes, Pintér said.

He thanked Soylu for Turkey’s help in preserving Hungarian and European security.

read also: Third-world conditions? Armed guards escort passengers on Debrecen trains

Soylu noted that at the November meeting, Prime Minister Viktor Orbán said the coronavirus pandemic, illegal migration, energy supply woes and the resulting economic difficulties were the main global challenges of the era.

As a result, the world also needed to face terrorism, drug crimes, cross-border crime and cybercrime, Soylu said. Those issues cannot be tackled without cooperation, he said.

Turkey participated in a similar cooperation with Serbian authorities in 2019, he said. Turkish officers there contributed to detaining hundreds of illegal migrants, and seizing large amounts of drugs and weapons, he said. Hopefully, the results will be similarly good in Hungary, he said.

Military drill Southern border
Read alsoArmed Forces hold exercise on Hungary-Serbia border

Armed Forces hold exercise on Hungary-Serbia border

Military drill Southern border
The Hungarian police and Armed Forces are ready and able to protect the country’s security, Defence Minister Tibor Benkő said at an exercise held at Röszke, near the Hungary-Serbia border, on Wednesday.
 
Speaking at the Határozott Fellépés 2021 (Commanding Presence 2021) exercise held for soldiers and police serving at the border, Benkő said Europe was surrounded by migration, which brought dangers “that could lead to tragedy if we don’t deal with them effectively”. The number of armed forces deployed to the border changes according to need, Benkő said.
 
Hungarian soldiers are also working abroad to “solve problems where they arise rather than letting them into Hungary,”
 
he said.
 
Lieutenant Colonel Ferenc Márkus, head of the Armed Forces operational command, said currently
 
500 soldiers serve in temporary units at the southern border.
 
They have 200 devices at their disposal to facilitate patrols and surveillance, he said. Patrol tasks are carried out in cooperation with police forces, Márkus said.
 
At the exercise, the participants were briefed on “typical incidents” and the authorities’ typical response. Migration pressure on the southern border has grown considerably since last year, Markus said.
 
Over 62,000 migrants were intercepted this year more than double last year’s figure,
 
he said.
 
 
Illegal border crossings are organised by groups which coordinate their operations, Márkus said. They are constantly probing defences and attempting to cross simultaneously at multiple points, he said. State Secretary Szilárd Németh praised the soldiers and police present for “proving that they can protect the country and fulfill the requirements of the Schengen Agreement”. “The majority of Hungarians have stated clearly that
 
they want to protect their country,
 
live in peace and raise their children in the traditions they received from their parents,” he said.
Military High School
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Hungarian police officers drugged and raped their colleague!

Rape woman

The policewoman was drugged by her two colleagues after dinner at the end of their workday

“I love my job, but I’m fed up, I don’t want to wear the uniform anymore. My colleagues drugged and raped me, they videotaped it… after that, what would keep me here?” says Katalin Zsiga, according to Blikk.hu.

“All I can remember is that after the shift was over, we had dinner. I had a headache, so I went to sleep in the boarding house where we were accommodated. I’m not really a social person, I don’t go to parties, I don’t drink alcohol, which the others knew. I was feeling even worse in the morning, still having a headache, and I had stomach cramps. I also fainted on the way back from the border.”

Even though she was not feeling well, she did not go to the doctor at the time.

“One day, I was in charge of guarding the barracks, and one former colleague, who is now working for the Republican Guard Regiment, called me. He said that I needed to know something, that a video was circulating about me, showing two of my colleagues, a staff sergeant and a chief sergeant, raping me. I didn’t want to believe it, but then I saw it,” said Zsiga.

The sergeant claims one of the rapists confessed his actions but also said that “it all happened because the woman did not give in.” Katalin also claims that her colleague threatened her in case she dared to talk about what had happened, but she wrote a report to her commander describing not only the rape and the video but also the threat.

Zsiga lodged a complaint at the Debrecen Regional Prosecution Office a few days ago, but her case was taken over by the Szeged Regional Prosecution Office, which is closer to the scene of the crime.

The National Police Headquarters promised to provide all possible support for the investigation.

Is migration and terrorism linked?

migration-terrorism
NATO must effectively handle challenges from the South and counter terrorism and migration if it is to guarantee European security, Péter Szijjártó, Hungary’s foreign minister, said in Riga on Wednesday.
 
On the second day of the meeting of NATO foreign ministers, Szijjarto noted ongoing migration pressure coming from Europe’s southern and south-eastern flanks involving security risks such as terrorism, according to a ministry statement.

He warned of an intensification of migration waves through the Western Balkans, adding that
 
“even greater masses may appear at Hungary’s southern border.”
 
The capabilities of countries to the south must be developed if security challenges are to be handled more effectively, he said, noting Hungary’s support for efforts in Jordan, Lebanon, Tunisia and Egypt to strengthen state structures for combatting terrorism.
 
“A clear link between terrorism and migration is evident in two respects,”
 
he said. First, terrorism triggers migration waves, and these in turn intensify the chance of terrorist acts when terrorists can easily hide among migrants and reach ever more distant parts of the world, he said.
 
“In Europe, we must avoid this,” Szijjártó said, adding that aid must be exported to where troubles lie instead of importing security threats from the South.

Brussels seeking to control members states’ migration policy?

Hungary Border Fence Migration Illegal
Brussels wants to direct the immigration policies of European Union member states in an effort to “build diverse, open societies” in those states, Tamás Menczer, state secretary of the foreign ministry, said on Facebook on Wednesday.
 
Referring to the EU’s 2021-27 immigration action plan adopted earlier in the day, Menczer quoted the document’s first section as saying that the community’s shared principles and values should guide members’ actions, while the next section suggested that members’ policies should be adjusted to the needs of a diverse society. “This is what George Soros also strives for,” Menczer added.
 
“Brussels considers immigration as an asset, while the Hungarian government is working to stop it, and will say no to controls from Brussels,”
 
Menczer said.
 
Meanwhile, Hungarian FM Péter Szijjártó said in Riga that the NATO has “seriously miscalculated” the situation in Afghanistan. He said the causes should be investigated and conclusions drawn. Speaking on the second day of a meeting of his NATO counterparts, Szijjártó said the Afghan government’s collapse was “a tragedy for Afghans and a shock for NATO”, whose members had planned to continue providing financial assistance until 2024. “But the political and security structure we were supporting in fact collapsed days after (NATO’s) pullout,” he said.
 
 
The causes of
 
NATO’s incorrect assessment of Afghanistan’s “political, social, and security aspects” should be understood, “whether they are of a personal, procedural or strategic nature, or whether NATO’s tactics led to this [outcome]”,
 
the minister said.
 
Managing the security risks that evolved after NATO’s pullout is an important task for Europe and central Asia, Szijjártó said. Each day
 
30,000-35,000 people set off from Afghanistan,
 
resulting in a “dramatic” increase in the number of illegal migrants at Hungary’s southern borders, he added.

Central Asian countries should receive assistance through aid and partnership programmes so they can protect their borders and retain their stability, or else the exodus from Afghanistan will mount further, Szijjártó said.

Szijjártó also said that
 
some of Hungary’s “big allies” had evacuated people from Afghanistan without prior security screening,
 
many of whom were temporarily accommodated in the Western Balkans. “Quite a few of them are now unable to pass strict security checks applied in the US and other countries, and the question is what will happen to them and whether they pose a security risk,” he said. “If there are hundreds or even thousands of them in the Western Balkans, that will indeed impact central Europe’s security,” Szijjártó added. Hungary will carry on maintaining strict border controls so that “neither those people nor illegal migrants can make their way into the country or to Europe through Hungary,” he said.
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Orbán: Migration pressure expected to ramp up

Viktor Orbán Kossuth Radio

Prime Minister Viktor Orbán told public radio on Friday that illegal migration was expected to ramp up significantly at Hungary’s southern border over the next few months.

At the same time, the Italian-Spanish, Eastern and Balkan routes were all seeing a massive increase in migration, he said, noting that 30,000-35,000 people were leaving Afghanistan each day, most likely in Hungary’s direction, intending to traverse the country.

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He said the European Union’s rules on migration had been written in peacetime and were now obsolete. “Today there’s no peacetime,” he added.

The new Berlin government sees Germany “as an immigrant country”, and Hungary is not in favour of turning into one, he said, adding that the two standpoints were “incompatible”, and neither side would abandon its position.

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Hungary, Serbia to simplify border crossing for each other’s citizens

Border Hungary enter travel
Hungary and Serbia will simplify border crossing for persons respecting regulations but they will continue to act together against those that intend to cross the border illegally, Foreign Minister Péter Szijjártó said on Thursday.
 
The minister told a joint press conference with Serbian counterpart Nikola Selakovic that the two countries were fighting together against migration, all the more so because the Western Balkan route is getting full again. He added that daily 30,000-35,000 people were leaving Afghanistan and
 
Hungary had so far registered 100,000 illegal border crossing attempts this year.
 
With the European Union being under migratory pressure from three directions, some two hundred Hungarian police officers have been participating in the protection of Serbia’s southern border this year in an effort to stop the wave of migrants as far away as possible.
 
A new border crossing will be permanently opened at Kübekháza next year, to simplify transport between Hungary and Serbia, he said.

Szijjártó welcomed that a legally binding building permit had been issued for the Hungarian stretch of the Budapest-Belgrade railway line and
 
the results of the public procurement for the Budapest stretch are to be announced in the near future.
 
He added that the Hungarian stretch was scheduled to be completed by 2025 and works on the Szeged-Szabadka(Subotica) link were planned to be completed by the end of 2022.

The two countries’ respective embassies will allow entry to each other’s diplomats at locations where one of them does not have diplomatic representation, he said.
 
Hungarian diplomats will thus be working in Serbia’s embassies in Zambia and Congo and Serbian diplomats in Hungary’s embassies in Malta and Chile,
 
he added.
 
A Financial Times correspondent asked Szijjarto about Hungary not getting invited to an online summit on democracy announced by the US, recent criticism voiced by former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, and whether the minister expected Washington, DC to take practical action beyond symbolic ones. Szijjarto said Clinton’s remarks made it clear that the December summit on democracy was an “event linked to domestic politics” as clearly demonstrated by the fact that countries which had good ties with former President Donald Trump had not been invited. Further attempts from abroad to interfere in the Hungarian election campaign are certainly expected, with “some already detected in preparatory phases”, he said. “The Hungarian services are doing their job to thwart these,” he added.
 
 
Selakovic said commenting on a statement by the Bosnian Serb leadership concerning secession that Bosnia-Herzegovina and the region’s peace and stability were matters of key importance to Serbia. He said
 
Serbia respected the territorial integrity of Bosnia-Herzegovina
 
and despite the Dayton Peace Treaty’s success so far
 
its amendment would be possible, albeit with the approval of both sides.

Szijjártó said that the stability of the Western Balkans was a priority issue for the whole of Europe. Western European leaders should have more frequent talks with Western Balkan counterparts in order to gain a better understanding of everyone involved, he added.
 
“European foreign policy should not be restricted to three words: sanctions, sanctions, sanctions,”
 
he said. “It has been rather unsuccessful in the past,” he added.
 
Selakovic appreciated Hungarian-Serbian relations based on mutual trust and respect. He pressed for economic cooperation to further develop, saying that Belgrade would like to see bilateral trade exceed 2 billion euros a year, he added.
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The border fence remains even if the opposition wins

Hungary Border Fence Migration Illegal

Hungary’s opposition, if it wins next year’s election, will retain the fence along the country’s border with Serbia, Péter Márki-Zay, the opposition alliance’s prime ministerial candidate, said at Roszke border station on Thursday.

The opposition “seeks to retain what works; not only family support and low taxes but the fence protecting the border, too”, he said. “The fence is an effective tool in preventing illegal migration,” he said. A new government set up by the opposition

would fully cooperate with Frontex,

with Hungarian police and EU officers controlling the borders together, he said.

Márki-Zay slammed the government for “settling in Hungary 55,000 migrants in 2019, and 43,000 in 2020, during the pandemic”. The opposition, he added, intended to resolve a labour shortage by luring home Hungarians working abroad.

Six foreign human smugglers sentenced to prison in Hungary!

In response, ruling Fidesz said that Márki-Zay represented the policies of Democratic Coalition leader Ferenc Gyurcsány and his left-wing allies.

Fidesz accused Márki-Zay of regularly taking a stand for migration, speaking about its benefits and stressing the need to allow migrants into the country and integrate them.

“The left wing would obey the instructions of Brussels

without further ado and settle migrants in Hungary,” Fidesz said.

Hungary migration
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