migration

DefMin: Hungary stands by democratically elected Niger president

Defence Minister Niger

Hungary stands by the democratically elected president of Niger, Mohamed Bazoum, Kristóf Szalay-Bobrovniczky, the defence minister, said on Facebook on Thursday.

“We are closely monitoring developments in Niger”, the minister said. “What is happening is dangerous and concerning,” he added.

“The Sahel region requires special attention because what happens there has a direct impact on the security of Europe, including Hungary, and the region plays a key role in restraining migration,” Szalay-Bobrovniczky said.

“It is our vital interest to strengthen the stability of the region, which is why this is one of the priorities of our EU presidency next year,” he said.

“Just over a month ago, these issues were also discussed with Niger’s defence minister in Budapest,” Szalay-Bobrovniczky added. “The defence cooperation agreement signed at the meeting was intended to provide a framework for this,” the minister said.

FM Szijjártó: Africa’s Sahel region stability important to us

Szijjártó urgently phoned his Russian counterpart

The stability of Africa’s Sahel region is critically important, the Hungarian foreign minister said on Tuesday, arguing that stability in the area made it less likely that large groups of migrants would set off for Europe again.

The situation in the region’s key country, Niger, remains “critical”, with the military having “practically taken the president hostage”, Péter Szijjártó said on Facebook.

The minister said he had discussed on the phone the situation in Niger with his French counterpart, Catherine Colonna, on Tuesday, adding they were in agreement on the need to stand by the country’s democratically elected president and the restoration of constitutionality, in line with the international statements made in the matter.

The international community and most regional organisations have expressed support for Niger’s president, Szijjártó said. “We have done likewise, as the region’s stability is critically important for us, too,” he added.

Because if there is stability in the Sahel region, then it is far less likely that more migration waves will start making their way towards Europe, and a further aggravation of the threat of terrorism can be prevented, Szijjártó said.

Child dies when car crashes into another with refugees

car accident

One child died and five people were injured when a car carrying illegal migrants veered off the M5 motorway and crashed in south-eastern Hungary early on Tuesday, Bács-Kiskun County police said.

On the side of the M5 motorway leading to the capital, at km 66, a car with Romanian license plate number drifted off the road for unknown reasons and drove into a ditch at 6:03 AM on 1 August 2023, police.hu reports. The accident left one child dead and five others injured.

A Moldovan national was driving seven migrants in the car with Romanian number plates. The motorway near Lajosmizse has been partially closed to traffic. The police ask for the increased attention and patience of drivers.

Featured image: illustration (Pixabay)

Orbán outraged: “we don’t want migrant ghettos”

Migrant ghettos border

Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, in an interview with public radio on Friday, said: “We don’t want either migrant quotas or migrant ghettos.”

“All we Hungarians can say that we consider the risk of the country’s deterioration to be so great that we don’t want either migrant quotas or migrant ghettos, and if we don’t want them, we won’t have them,” the prime minister said.

Orbán said it was an “unexpected coincidence” that Italy, a country which had long opposed mandatory migrant quotas and the creation of “migrant ghettos”, had changed its position and accepted the new proposal; and just a few weeks later, Italy received 19 billion euros from the European Union’s post-pandemic recovery fund from which Hungary was not getting its share.

“There are complicated games being played in the background; I don’t believe in these,” he said, adding that migration was not a tactical or strategic issue “but rather a historical one” which should be treated as such.

The Hungarian government has submitted a EUR 238 million bill to Brussels

Gergely Gulyás government info

The European Union’s current migration-related proposals run counter to the interests of Europe, the head of the Prime Minister’s Office told a press briefing on Thursday, arguing that such policies would boost immigration and result in the emergence of “migrant ghettos”.

At the same time, Gergely Gulyás said it was welcome that the European Parliament had listened to the objections of the Visegrad Group countries, Germany and the Netherlands to ramming through the proposals. Discussions, he added, would continue in September.

He underlined Hungary’s objection to any kind of migrant redistribution mechanism and quotas. Current proposals would undermine Europe’s interests, he said, arguing that they failed to contain any guarantees against effective border protection and carried the risk of asylum procedures still being executed within the bloc’s borders.

Migration pressure in Europe would mount significantly if the proposals were approved, Gulyás said, noting that the number of people seeking to enter Europe would already reach a record high this year.

Hungary has spent 650 billion forints (EUR 1.7bn) on border protection so far and has requested compensation from Brussels, Gulyás said. The EU has covered less than 1 percent of those costs, but Hungary has asked it to cover at least 50 percent, he added.

If the EU wants effective border protection and a well-functioning passport-free Schengen area, then the European Commission should compensate member states for their border protection costs or make significant contributions to them, he said.

Meanwhile, Gulyás said Hungary had fulfilled the so-called enabling condition, the “milestone” related to the judiciary defined by the EC, adding that there could be no more obstacles to Hungary receiving funding from the EU’s seven-year budget.

Hungary has sent invoices for EUR  238 million in European Union funding for the 2021-2027 financial cycle to Brussels, of which the EU must pay 85 percent, or EUR 202 million, Gulyás said.

The EC has 90 days to confirm Hungary’s implementation of the enabling condition and 60 days to process the invoices and transfer the funds, he said.

Most of the invoices are for advance payments from the Economic Development and Innovation Operative Programme Plus (GINOP) to fund small and medium-sized businesses, Gulyás said.

Once Hungary receives the necessary funding from Brussels, teachers will be given a pay rise, he said, adding that the EC “owed” Hungarian teachers HUF 800 billion.

Commenting on the state of the economy, Gulyás said the extremely difficult situation resulting from the Russia-Ukraine war, further worsened by European sanctions, appeared to be somewhat improving. The economic outlook is improving and economic growth will accelerate in the second half of the year, he added.

Gulyás called “realistic” the growth target of 1.5 percent GDP contained in the 2023 budget — “or at least 1 percent” — while 4 percent growth next year was “viable”.

He said inflation was expected to decrease rapidly, and “if everything goes well, inflation will be in the single digits by as early as October, while every month from now on there will be 2, 3 or 4 percentage point drops.”

Gulyás said the government had done much to shield households from the harmful effects of inflation, including the price caps on certain food products and the mandatory discounts supermarkets must offer regularly on a number of food products, which will be increased from 10 percent to 15 percent from August 1. He added that SZÉP voucher card balances could be used for purchases in supermarkets from next month, and the balances could be topped up by 200,000 forints.

Gulyás said the government’s top priority was to tackle inflation, “but not everyone is involved in this struggle”. The authorities have imposed fines totalling 3.1 billion forints on entities trying to profit off inflation, he said.

He said an inflation rate of 6 percent or possibly as low as 5 percent was realistic for next year.

As regards the war in Ukraine, Gulyás said Hungary continued to urge a ceasefire and peace talks, arguing that this was the only way to “end the killing”.

The most conservative estimates indicate that more than 310,000 people have died in the war, he said, adding that some estimates even put this figure at 700,000-800,000. Close to 10,000 of those were, he said, civilian casualties and a least 16,500 civilians had been wounded in the conflict, he said.

He said Russian reserves and losses had been significantly greater, and the Ukrainian counteroffensive had yet to achieve meaningful results, he said. Gulyás added that it was very hard for either side to break through the other’s defences.

Gulyás said all this demonstrated that the Hungarian government had been justified in calling for an urgent ceasefire and peace talks.

Shots fired, explosion on the Serbian-Hungarian border

Shots were fired on Tuesday night on the southern side of the Hungarian border fence near Hajdújárás (Hajdukovo), Serbia. Locals say there was an explosion as well. The cause of it is not yet known.

According to Magyar Nemzet, this is the second shooting in the mainly Hungarian village this week. The first one was on Monday. Based on official information, two migrants were injured and one was killed in Monday’s shootings.

The news portal reports that the explosion was also heard in the surrounding villages of Palics (Palić) and Ludas (Šupljak). Locals informed the police.

You can read HERE how guest workers caused some problems in a well-known Hungarian spa.

Featured image: Illustration (Pixabay)

Guest workers cause problems at Hungary’s best-known spa

hungarospa hajdúszoboszló

The locals fear that the tourism of Hajdúszoboszló could be affected by the arrival of guest workers for the construction of gigantic projects in Debrecen.

Guest workers in Hajdúszoboszló

A workers’ hotel is already under construction in the town as a private investment. The county government office has given permission for this without informing the municipality. The appearance of the hostels was brought to the attention of one of the MPs, who wrote an angry post on social media, which he later deleted.

“We have practically banned the construction of workers’ hostels in almost the entire city. The way I like to say it is that there hasn’t been this ban earlier because, let’s say, there’s no ban on building a spaceport either, because who would have thought to put that in here?”, said Kálmán Jónás, a local government representative, to ATV News.

No more workers’ hostels

The municipality has asked room rental companies not to set up hostels for guest workers in the city. The problem is that few are doing this because it is a secure source of income.

In Hungary, in Hajdú-Bihar county, the large influx of foreigners already posed an issue in January 2022. In Hajdúnánás, locals were scared because they thought the Indian guest workers staying there were migrants. They later calmed down when they learned that it was not illegal immigrants who had arrived in the town but guest workers from MOL company who had been put up in a local guesthouse.

A contradictory situation

“We have never invited anyone to live here with us, either as a guest worker or for any other reason,” said Viktor Orbán, Hungary’s prime minister in 2017. The Hungarian government has previously pursued an anti-immigration policy on several occasions, telex.hu reports.

Recently, however, Fidesz has announced several investments in the Debrecen and Hajdúszoboszló area. BMW is building an automotive plant in the area, while two Chinese companies are building battery factories. It is said in the announcement that this will create many jobs, but not that these jobs will be filled by guest workers from outside the EU because of the Hungarian labour shortage.

Under the Hungarian government’s new guest worker law, a guest worker can stay for 2+1 years, but this is futile if they are constantly changing. Locals are outraged that while the government is attacking Brussels and the EU over the mandatory resettlement quota for migrants, the party itself is bringing in projects to attract tens of thousands of guest workers to Hungary.

People smuggling is on a roll, with a Romanian caught with 24 migrants

Daily News Hungary Logo Új

A local court has ordered the detention of a Romanian driver who attempted to smuggle 24 illegal migrants from Hungary to Slovenia, hiding them in his truck “under inhuman circumstances”, a spokeswoman of the Zala County Prosecutor’s Office said on Monday.

The 39-year-old driver arranged to meet the group of Bangladeshi and Sri Lankan migrants near Arad, Romania and hid them in small spaces inside the vehicle’s compartment, Judit Janky said. Hungarian customs officers conducted an inspection at a parking lot on motorway M70 at Csörnyeföld near the border with Slovenia last Thursday and discovered the migrants squeezed in the compartment without getting sufficient fresh air, water and food, she said.

The Romanian driver was taken into custody on charges of people smuggling and physical abuse over the weekend, Janky said.

Smugglers disguised as furniture carriers, almost 30 illegal migrants were in an airless lorry – VIDEO

illegal migrants Hungary NAV

Customs officials have apprehended two foreign nationals trying to transport 29 illegal migrants to Italy in a truck, the national tax authority (NAV) said on Monday.

A Romanian and a Greek man hid four women and 25 men among furniture and moving boxes and told inspecting officers they were moving furniture and personal property when the truck with German licence plates was stopped in Zala County in southwest Hungary.

The migrants, who said they were from Pakistan, Sri Lanka and India, were “suffocating” in the overheated cargo hold “and might not have made it to the end of the journey”, NAV said.

The smugglers and the migrants were handed over to the Zala County police, NAV said.

As we wrote before, the Hungarian government released 700 foreign criminals from jail, details HERE.

Hungarian Justice min points to similarities between Hungary, Texas policy

Judit Varga Texas

There are several similarities between the policies of Hungary and the state of Texas, Justice Minister Judit Varga told online US daily The Dallas Express in an interview published on Wednesday.

“We believe in family, we believe in national sovereignty, we don’t think that mass illegal migration is a good thing for our future, et cetera,” Varga said.

The minister said the goal of her visiting Texas was “to enhance synergies between conservative politics all over the continents.”

“We need to make friendships, we need to get to know each other and find common ground,” she said. “There might be differences when it comes to details, but when it comes to the real principles, then I think we understand each other,” she said.

Concerning migration, Varga said “we respect others, and we also expect respect for our national policy, which is supported by a huge majority of voters, so this is the basis of how we implement this very strong border.” “But that only earns us slaps in the face in the centre of the European Union.”

“We are curbing mass illegal migration, protecting not only the Hungarian borders but also the external boundaries of European, the so-called Schengen border,” Varga said.

Varga suggested that the European Union’s immigration rules were no longer adequate to deal with the current situation.

“The European asylum and migration legal framework is outdated. It is not well designed for the 21st-century mass migration,” she said. It was designed at the end of the last century, and this kind of challenge was not the same which exists today, ” she said.

To read the full article, visit dallasexpress.com.

Minister Szijjártó in UN ECOSOC: Hungary ranked 22nd in meeting sustainable development goals

Péter Szijjártó Hungary United Nations

Mankind will only have a chance to preserve the planet for future generations by preventing the re-emergence of divisive blocs in the world, Foreign Minister Péter Szijjártó said at a high-level meeting of the United Nations Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) in New York on Monday.

In his address, Szijjártó noted that the world had recently undergone two major shocks in the form of the coronavirus pandemic and the war in Ukraine.

The global security situation is the worst it has been in the last 80 years, the minister said. He argued that the threat of terrorism was greater than ever before and that the world was “witnessing the most open and most shameless reference to nuclear capacities, while the chance for the outbreak of the third world war is more imminent than ever”.

These security challenges threaten the re-emergence of divisive blocs in the world and could divert attention from the problem of preserving the planet, Szijjártó said. He said these challenges constituted a “vicious circle”, as divisive blocs would make it impossible to overcome environmental and climate-related challenges.

Referring to a “regional partnership group established by Serbia and Hungary”, Szijjártó urged the international community on behalf of both countries “to make a decision based on common sense”.

“And instead of dividing the world into blocs again, let’s enter the era of connectivity,” he said, adding that connectivity would promote mutually beneficial global cooperation based on mutual respect.

The minister said Hungary and Serbia served as a good example of how a past hostile relationship could be “converted into a friendship and strategic partnership”.

Though Hungary and Serbia could have chosen to be isolated from each other, their leaders understood that connectivity was beneficial for both countries, Szijjártó said.

Meanwhile, the minister said Hungary had emerged stronger from all of the recent crises thanks to its national responses to them. Hungary responded to the financial crisis with tax cuts, to the migration crisis with stronger border protection, to the economic crisis with investment promotion schemes, and to the energy crisis with the recognition that energy supply is a physical rather than a political or ideological matter, Szijjártó said.

He welcomed that these response measures had enabled Hungary to contribute to meeting the UN’s sustainable development targets. Citing the UN’s sustainability report, he said, Hungary ranked 22nd and Serbia 36th in meeting sustainable development goals.

Water and energy security are among the two most important issues and Hungary is committed resolving the challenges related to them, he said.

Concerning water shortages, Szijjártó highlighted the importance of technology, noting that water management solutions developed by Hungary were being used in many parts of the world. Water security is also critical for preventing the emergence of more migration waves, he added.

As regards the energy crisis, Szijjártó said the key question was how to reduce the environmental impact of energy production. He said the “obvious answer” was nuclear energy because it was a safe, cheap and sustainable way of producing electricity. He said the debate about nuclear energy had been based on emotions on many international platforms, but expressed hope that the UN “will continue to serve as a platform which is rational”.

Orbán: the USA could end the war in Ukraine immediately

Prime minister Viktor Orbán

The conflict in Ukraine will be drawn out because “westerners want the war to continue”, Prime Minister Viktor Orbán said on Friday. Orbán told public radio that “the government has very different tasks, and Hungarians will have a very different future, depending on whether there is a war or there is no war”. “The proportion and number of pro-war supporters remains overwhelming and there are hardly any of us using the voice of peace,” Orbán said. “We must be prepared that the war and sanctions will not disappear from our lives,” he added. If it actually happened, “a large part of the economic troubles would be fixed”.

Orbán said that in the current situation “we must bring down inflation. We discontinue certain measures and introduce others, whatever works we will keep”. He said the price monitoring system was very helpful in this regard and added that mandatory food discounts had also been introduced. “We can see that the inflation rate will decrease every month,” he added. He said a government meeting held in Sopronbanfalva, western Hungary, discussed ways to keep the war and illegal migrants away from Hungary and “protect families and pensioners from plans made by Brussels bureaucrats”.

Orbán said some “great issues” were kept on the agenda that “could determine our fate for decades”, citing energy supplies for the country in the next 10-20 years, ways to utilise Hungary’s favourable geographical position, preserving the quality of Hungarian agricultural products and issues concerning the military force and demographics. Meanwhile, the prime minister said the ongoing cabinet meeting was also focused on exploring the legal and political means available to prevent Brussels from implementing the plan on migrant quotas.

No ghettos

“If we obeyed Brussels, which we do not intend to do, we would be forced to build migrant ghettos in Hungary,” he added. “There’s another direct threat, and this one also comes from Brussels,” the prime minister said. He said the EU had again put forward a proposal that would lead to Hungary having to scrap its price caps on energy. Yet on Thursday the cabinet discussed “how we’re not going to scrap the utility price caps”, and how Hungarian interests could be enforced in energy regulation “at home and also in Brussels”, he added. “These clever men sit in a big bubble in Brussels and they think that that they understand the world better than we do here, in Budapest or now in Sopron,” he said.

Orbán said there was one more issue “which must be decided by all means” on Friday. A new waste management system has been introduced which would result in a significant disadvantage for Hungarian winemakers in the strong competition in Europe resulting from regulations affecting bottles. He also said that when Ukrainians were fighting for the survival of their nation in the war, “they do not care about the rest of the world”. “They can only look at the conflict through their own spectacles” which is normal but it means “we must keep our wits about it”. “If we did what the Ukrainian president is asking for, we’d be in the third world war,” Orbán said.

Orbán: NATO is at war with Russia

If Ukraine was given NATO membership now, it would immediately mean a third world war “because it would mean that NATO is at war with Russia”. He said that a favourable decision was reached in the end, with the majority not wanting to take on the risk of war and Ukraine was therefore not allowed to join. Orbán said Ukrainians’ communication style was “undoubtedly unusual” considering that “when you are in trouble and ask for help, you should behave correctly”. However, “Ukrainians are aggressive, making demands” while the people in Ukraine die by the hundreds and thousands on a daily basis, he added. The Ukrainians “are in great trouble, they face matters of life and death, and they see the world very differently from us”, he said.

Orbán said it was important that “we should not accept the perspective through which they look at the world because if we accept it, then we will slip into the war”. Those countries that supply weapons to Ukraine are already involved in the war, he said. Although Ukrainians have not been admitted into NATO and the direct threat of world war has been avoided, “we have not progressed closer to peace even by an inch,” he said. On the contrary, there is an escalation, with new and increasingly long-range weapons and effective explosives that the Ukrainians receive from western states, especially from the US, he said. “So the situation continues to be extremely dangerous,” he said.

In the Christian world “where we belong” the most important issue, which Hungary also argues for, is ceasefire and peace talks. It is also important for Hungarians because the war is in a neighbouring country and “various escalations could reach Transcarpathia and then Hungary”, he said. Orbán said that he agreed with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky that the United States could end the war in Ukraine with immediate effect. He added that nobody knew why this was not happening.

Ukraine has already lost it sovereignty, it has no money, no defence industry and no ability to manufacture military equipment, Orbán said. “It receives money from us also, mostly from the Americans” and also military equipment, he added. If the US said that it wanted peace and the war must be stopped, there must be a ceasefire and talks should be started, it would happen the following day, Orban said. “As to why the Americans don’t want this, we did not get an answer even at the NATO summit,” he said.

Inflation on the right path

Concerning the economy, the prime minister said that though the government planned to bring inflation down to the single digits by the end of this year, that target could be reached “one to one-and-a-half months” earlier. Inflation is “on the right path and a downward trajectory”, he added. Orbán also said the public utility fee cut scheme must be maintained by all means.

The scheme should not be considered purely as an energy issue, he added. “It’s worth considering that the government supports every family with 181,000 forints, so the utility fee cut scheme is a matter of living standards for the middle class and those who are poorer”, he said. As regards migration, the prime minister said the only solution to the migrant crisis was if migrants were not allowed entry into Europe. Summarising Hungary’s position on the European Union’s migration package, Orbán said: “No migration.”

When it comes to the issue of migration, Hungary relies solely on its own experience, he said, adding that the reason why there were no migrants in the country was because the Hungarian model was working. Some 330,000 illegal migrants were stopped at Europe’s borders last year, 270,000 of whom were stopped on the Hungarian border, Orbán noted. The prime minister noted the clashes between migrants and police at the Roszke border crossing in 2015 and how hundreds of thousands of migrants “marched across the country” and “invaded Budapest’s train stations”.

Hungary will protect Europe

Only those migrants whose asylum applications are approved should be allowed to enter Europe, he said. It is this Hungarian model that they now want to “tear down”, but the government will protect the only successful border protection regime in Europe, Orbán said. “This is our country and only we can say who can enter Hungary, when and under what conditions,” he added. As long as there is a nationally minded government in power, there will not be any “migrant ghettos” in Hungary, the prime minister said. He said that after the effort it took to solve the problem of closing the refugee camps in Hungary, “they want to dump it on us again”.

Orbán said a Hungarian government that acted as the western European ones do “would be ousted in three minutes”. Asked what tools he had at his disposal for protecting the country, Orbán said it was crucial to stand firm because “the first frontline of the fight against migration is in the Hungarian Parliament”. “There are mercenaries sitting across from us,” the prime minister said. He said the government must not give in to the demands of the opposition, arguing that they would tear down Hungary’s border fence, approve the migrant quotas, support the decisions in Brussels and build migrant ghettos.

Opposition paid by foreign powers

Many in the opposition are paid in foreign currency, dollars, euros and forints, “and everyone knows that he who pays the piper calls the tune,” the prime minister said. Brussels can use the Hungarian left to force the migrant quotas and migrant ghettos onto Hungary at any time, he said. Orbán said there were legal means available for delaying certain decisions in connection with the debate on migration, adding that “resistance groups” were also being organised. He expressed hope that more countries would begin to oppose migration along the way.

On another subject, Orbán said it must be made clear that “foreigners can’t buy political influence in Hungary”. He said though there was reason to bring up corruption when it came to the foreign campaign donations received by Hungary’s left-wing parties in last year’s general election, he saw the matter more as a question of sovereignty. If Hungarian lawmakers or the mayor of the Hungarian capital can be bought, “that means that these people don’t make decisions based on the interests of the Hungarian people, but rather on the expectations of their clients”, he said. “That means we’re not sovereign,” he added. Corruption is a crime everywhere, the prime minister said, adding that Hungary had not dealt with this issue properly. Orbán said that though he believed the case in question called for punishment, the regulations needed to be made clearer.

Fidesz: 40 thousand migrants may come to Hungary per year creating “migrant ghettos”

Migration refugee camp EU migration pact

Hungary will not implement Brussels’s “flawed” decisions on mandatory resettlement quotas and the establishment of “migrant ghettos” under any circumstances, Tamás Deutsch, the head of ruling Fidesz’s EP delegation, said in Strasbourg on Wednesday.

Speaking to Hungarian reporters, Deutsch cited the “failed ideology and political practice of multiculturalism” as the reason behind the recent migration-related proposals adopted by the council of EU interior ministers. Under the draft legislation, the EU’s new migration laws would incorporate mandatory migrant resettlement quotas and member states would be required to set up camps for migrants, Deutsch said.

He said the aim of the draft legislation was to “implement the Soros plan supporting mass illegal migration”. The Fidesz MEP said the plan entailed “the import of at least a million migrants a year” and a resettlement quota scheme without an upper limit. Member states that refuse to accommodate migrants would be made to pay 20,000 euros per migrant, and border fences would have to be dismantled, he added.

Under the plan, up to 40,000 migrants could be resettled in Hungary each year and the Hungarian authorities would have to assess tens of thousands of asylum applications, he said. Hungary will not implement this decision under any circumstances, Deutsch said, adding that the country deserved recognition for preventing the entry of more than one million migrants into the European Union with the help of its border fence over the last five years.

Is it true that tons of Hungarians are emigrating from their country?

emigration travel

The question of emigration and immigration is a hot topic nowadays. It constantly makes headlines, however,  the media often raises false alarm when it comes to the exact figures. Let’s shed light on the real facts now.

Terms

According to Növekedés.hu, to be able to get a real insight, first we must be familiar with the terms. An emigrant is someone who leaves their country, in this case Hungary, for at least 12 months, regardless of the reason why. In addition to that, foreign citizens with residence permit who leave Hungary in the given year without the intention of returning, whose permit has expired and have not been renewed, or whose permit has been cancelled due to revocation can be also considered emigrants.

It goes without saying that an immigrant is the opposite of an emigrant. For instance, a Hungarian citizen who has lived or was born abroad came to Hungary with the intention of settling, and who has returned from abroad after at least 12 months is a foreign national who entered Hungary in the given year and obtained a residence or settlement permit or registration certificate in accordance with the legislation.

Emigration vs immigration

The Hungarian Central Statistical Office (KSH) provides annual data on the number of emigrants from Hungary and immigrants to Hungary. Moreover, KSH breaks down the statistics to the people who were born in Hungary and are returning after their stay of over 12 months abroad, and immigrants who were born abroad. Since 2016, the number of immigrants is higher than that of the emigrants. Statistics also show that the number of Hungarian emigrants returning home is higher than the number of Hungarian born abroad relocating to Hungary.

If we look at the difference between the share of immigrants and expatriates per head of population, we can conclude that the rate is the most balanced in Hungary, Estonia, Finland and Cyprus when comparing the European countries. The difference is less than 1.5 percentage points. According to United Nations‘ statistics, when examining Hungary and its neighbouring countries, Hungary had the lowest rate of emigrants in relation to the current population.

UN statistics

According to UN’s statistics, there are 714,420 Hungarians, who were born in Hungary, living abroad. For some reason, many believe that emigration is a new phenomenon, but this is not the case. Even in 1990, there were over 400,000 Hungarians (born in Hungary) living abroad. UN also shared that there are 584,567 fellow countrymen who did not born in Hungary, but live there now.

State secretary: EU wants biggest migrant ghetto in Hungary

rétvári bence migrants brussels

Brussels’ proposal on mandatory migrant settlement quotas would establish the European Union’s “biggest migrant ghetto” in Hungary, the interior ministry state secretary said on Saturday.

Bence Rétvári told MTI that the proposal would require Hungary to assess 28.3 percent of all refugee applications from migrants arriving in the EU. Germany would have to process just 1.4 percent, France 2 percent and Sweden 0.2 percent of the applications, he added.

Hungary would have to maintain an apparatus capable of assessing 11,320 applications simultaneously, resulting in the presence of “tens of thousands” of illegal migrants in the country, Rétvári said.

“Hungary will not accept mandatory quotas, the threat of fines or the establishment of migrant camps,” he added

He noted that 98 percent of participants in a referendum in 2016, some 3.3 million people, had said “no” to mandatory resettlement quotas. He also faulted Brussels for “breaking its own rule” when the decision on the mandatory quotas was taken by qualified majority rather than consensus.

“We won’t let the EU decide on whom we’ll allow into our country,” Rétvári said. “That can be decided only by Hungarians, not the bureaucrats in Brussels,” he added.

He said refugee applications should be assessed outside of the EU, because once illegal migrants entered the EU it was “practically impossible” to deport them.

Rétvári’s Facebook post on the matter:

Orbán: Hungarians are protecting Europe

Viktor Orbán Russia NATO secret plan PM Orbán

Hungarians are protecting not just Hungary, but the whole of Europe, including Austria, against illegal migrants, Prime Minister Viktor Orbán said at a Hungary-Austria-Serbia migration summit in Vienna on Friday.

A total of 330,000 illegal migrants were stopped at Europe’s borders last year, 270,000 of whom were apprehended at the Hungary-Serbia border, Orbán said.

The Hungarian model is effective and is based on the simple idea that no one can enter the territory of a country until their asylum request has been evaluated, the prime minister said.

Asylum seekers can enter the country in question once their request is approved, he added.

Orbán: Hungary won’t carry out EU’s migration decisions

Hungary will not carry out the European Union’s decisions on migration; the country does not accept mandatory quotas or the obligation to build camps for migrants or “migrant ghettos”, Viktor Orbán said.

The EU decisions would involve replacing an effective Hungarian model with an “obviously non-functioning” new European model, he said at a Hungary-Austria-Serbia migration summit in Vienna.

Hungary will find the legal and political means in order to prevent Brussels’s decisions from being implemented, he said.

Orbán added that the situation was “sad” because Hungary had to protect itself not only from illegal migrants and human smugglers, but also from Brussels.

Government: Brussels keeps pressuring and attacking Hungary

European Union Hungary Poland venice commission EU funds

“Brussels keeps pressuring Hungary” as it transpires from its fresh report, “a new attack” on the country despite its fulfillment of every recommendations and continued dialogue with the European Commission, the government’s information centre (KTK) told MTI in a statement on Wednesday.

KTK issued its statement in response to remarks made by Vera Jourová, Vice-President of the European Commission for Values and Transparency, while presenting in Brussels the EC’s 2023 rule of law report including all 27 EU member states. Jourová said despite positive developments “more work needs to be done” to improve the situation regarding the independence of the judiciary, corruption and the media.

“Hungary is being attacked because we refuse to join the pro-war camp,” KTK said.

The Hungarian government does not want “migrant ghettos” to be set up and refuses plans aimed at scrapping the utility price cut scheme. The government in addition has the courage to ask the European Commission the question “where is the pile of money that has been given to Ukraine?”.

Szijjártó: Integration in Western Europe a failure

Hungary foreign minister Péter Szijjártó

Recent developments in France “clearly indicate the failure of efforts aimed at social integration in western Europe,” Foreign Minister Péter Szijjártó told lawmakers on Tuesday.

“It has now become clear that it is impossible to integrate migrants illegally arriving in large masses from different cultures,” the foreign ministry quoted Szijjártó as saying.

“Those with the vain hope that western Europe’s integration endeavours could succeed … have seen the reports from France and are now disappointed,” the minister said. In many countries “parallel societies” have evolved and “in many cases the quiet majority is terrified … but no tragedy will make those in Brussels come to their senses,” Szijjártó said.

“Tragedies in the Mediterranean, accidents in which people are killed, disturbances in large cities and thousands of burning cars will not be enough,” he added.

People have the clear expectation that “the well-paid European bureaucrats in Brussels” should ensure the protection of the community’s residents, its borders, and they should stop migration, and “destroy the business model of people smugglers”, the minister said.

“But the Brussels bureaucracy is again striving to press through the mandatory migrant quota in a coup-like way,” he said.

“By definition, migrants forcing their entry through Hungary’s southern border are not refugees, since there is no war in Serbia and nobody’s life is in danger,” he said, adding that under international law people fleeing war should be granted temporary asylum “in the first safe country” they enter. Those who cross the Serbia-Hungary border “illegally, forcefully … violate Hungary’s sovereignty and its rules and should have no place in Hungary,” he said.

Contrary to the values and rules of the bloc, the EU is withholding funds due to Hungary for political reasons, he said, adding that Hungarians had “exercised their sovereign rights and decided on Hungary’s future” in a way that “liberal mainstream in Brussels” could not abide, and were being punished for doing so.

Szijjártó said 2.5 years into the seven-year budget cycle Brussels was already turning to member states for more resources, adding that spending “billions of euros” on military support for Ukraine and delivering arms which prolonged the war was “totally unreasonable”. Sanctions, he added, were damaging the European economy even when Europeans were not responsible for the war.

“What is enough for Brussels!?” Szijjártó asks:

Meanwhile, Brussels was asking Hungary to abolish of its scheme to keep utility bills low, “while European bureaucrats ask for millions and billions of euros for their own salaries”, he said, adding that “the bureaucrats” had failed to take “a single step towards peace”. Also, he said European competitiveness had dropped off a cliff “and European citizens have no money”.

The minister said it should be made clear why EUR 70 billion was spent on in Ukraine and why that sum was not enough.

Szijjártó asked: “Where is Hungary’s and Poland’s money? Do they still have this money?” Had it been channelled to other purposes? Also, why was extra money needed to finance interest on recovery loans when Hungary and Poland “has not received a single cent from this fund”?

“Hungary won’t abandon its utility cuts and it won’t give a single cent to raise the salaries of European bureaucrats,” he said. Further, the money of European citizens must not go to Ukraine until the EUR 70 billion spent so far has been accounted for, Szijjártó added.