The traffic is still heavy at the Croatian checkpoints, but the waiting time has decreased after the Croatian authorities temporarily ceased the restricted checking on the Croatia-Slovenia and Croatia-Hungary border, the Croatian Car Club (HAK) stated.
The Croatian border guards are doing random, direct checks right now.
According to the forecast of HAK on Sunday, cars wait 30 minutes and buses wait 40 minutes at the checkpoints, on average.
From Friday on, the citizens with the right of free movement must be checked in the European Union both at the entrance and the exit, and the shown documents are searched for in the Schengen Information System (SIS) and Interpol’s database about lost and stolen documents (SLTD) in order to convince the authorities that the given person does not mean any security, public order or public health risk in the EU.
Letenye, Hungary, photo: MTI
The restriction is due not only to the outer borders but to each inner border in the Union where the member states have not agreed upon the abolishment of border checking, and is valid for railway, air and sea borders as well.
The Croatian Ministry of Internal Affairs stated on Saturday that the Croatian authorities have applied all the technological resources and manpower, and that they cooperate with their Slovenian and Hungarian colleagues, but they did not manage to decrease the waiting time and traffic bottlenecks at the checkpoints.
Croatia warned Union Minister of Migration Dimitris Avramopulos about the huge traffic jams, with whom they agreed about the temporary cease of restricted checking on the Croatian side.
Zagreb, April 12 (MTI) – Bilateral relationships, economic cooperation, energy security and issues related to the European Union were among the topics discussed by Hungarian President János Áder and his Croatian counterpart Kolinda Grabar-Kitarovic in Zagreb on Wednesday.
As a part of the two-day visit to Croatia at the invitation of his counterpart, Áder and Grabar-Kitarovic are to address a plenary session of parliament together. The presidents are also holding a joint press conference later on Wednesday.
Prime Minister Andrej Plenkovic will receive President Áder for a working lunch on Wednesday.
Áder last paid a visit to Croatia in August and September last year. The Croatian president then visited Hungary later in September.
The two countries’ relationships were recently strained by issues surrounding the migration crisis of 2015. The issue of Hungarian oil and petrol company MOL’s shares in Croatian petrol company INA, which the Croatian government intends to buy back, has also darkened bilateral ties.
Áder, Grabar-Kitarovic highlight areas of cooperation
The migration route across the western Balkans has to be kept closed and the European Union’s external borders must be kept safe, Hungarian President János Áder said at a joint press conference with his Croatian counterpart.
Grabar-Kitarovic said that the two countries have to cooperate in order to counter the effects of tightened EU regulations regarding border control on the Schengen border. Some 3.5 million tourists and 900,000 vehicles cross the border of the passport-free Schengen zone between Hungary and Croatia every year, she said. Tightened border control threatens to cause serious congestions, which the countries should work together to prevent, she said.
Photo: MTI
Speaking after talks with Kolinda Grabar-Kitarovic as part of a two-day visit to Croatia, Áder highlighted transport and energy safety as important issues of the talks.
Áder highlighted the importance of developing transport ties between Hungary and Croatia, such as railway and road networks.
Áder also mentioned the completion of the missing sections of the M6 motorway as an important task. Hungary plans to finish building the motorway within the next three years, Ader said. He added that if Croatia were to be as effective in its work on the motorway as it had been on previous motorway construction projects, the motorway connecting Budapest and northern Sarajevo could be completed “within the foreseeable future”.
Áder said he had proposed in his talks with Grabar-Kitarovic that Hungary and Croatia should open more border crossing points between them. The last border crossing point between the two countries opened in 2008, he said.
On the topic of energy security, Áder noted the construction of an LNG terminal on the island of Krk, the matter of enabling reverse gas flows through the Hungarian-Croatian interconnector as well as the renovation of the Adriatic pipeline.
Áder said talks had also touched on a bilateral initiative concerning hydrocarbon mining and exploration on the Hungarian-Croatian border.
Áder said Hungary would work with Croatia to make sure that traffic at the border could proceed undisturbed.
Budapest (MTI) – The prime minister’s security advisor has said Hungary’s forthcoming national consultation, a survey of citizens on a range of issues including mass illegal migration, is necessary because the public will have the chance to give their opinion on the government’s migration policy and signal its opposition to demands made by Brussels.
György Bakondi told a news conference on Friday that the European Parliament on April 5 approved a position on the issue of asylum seekers and migrants with 90 points, including the principle of showing solidarity, providing a common response and integrating migrants, educating them and giving them jobs. It further calls on societies to show flexibility and acceptance of migrants, among other demands.
He said none accord with Hungarian government policies, and this is why the national consultation is especially relevant.
Bakondi said there were six ways in which the threats associated with migration would grow in the future. He said the sealed border would come under continuous attack, the influx of migrants would grow, internal EU border controls would permanently damage the Schengen agreement, and as a result of the European Union’s quota system, 40,000 refugees would be returned to Hungary “as part of the migration business of litigation”.
Photo: MTI
The security advisor said so far 371 people had crossed the border illegally as opposed to 18,000 during the same period last year. Of those, 250 had been apprehended inside the country. Ever since March 28, when Hungary’s stricter new laws entered force, there were 83 attempts to cross the country’s southern border, he said. Of those, 29 were directly thwarted and 54 people were caught and accompanied back to the other side of the border, he added.
The transit zones in Röszke and Tompa are now host to 99 people, while the orphanage in Fót is home to 21 unaccompanied minors, he said.
Bakondi said there had been several objections made that the refugee authority had not examined individual requests for asylum. He insisted, however, that this did not reflect reality: in every case requests have been examined — in transit zones too — to ensure that the applicant is not exposed to persecution upon their departure or in transit countries.
Tompa, April 6 (MTI) – Hungary complies with all EU regulations regarding the protection of external borders, Interior Minister Sándor Pintér told a press briefing on Thursday in Tompa, near the Hungarian-Serbian border.
Speaking after a visit to the local transit zone housing asylum seekers, Pintér said that the protection of the passport-free Schengen area’s external borders was an EU expectation. The goal is that no one should cross the border unchecked, Pinter said.
Those crossing the border illegally will be granted decent conditions in transit zones at Tompa and Röszke, outside the south borders of Hungary, he said. The two transit zones can accommodate 250 people each. Migrants can wait for the assessment of their applications there, he said. They are not detained, all asylum seekers are free to leave towards Serbia, the minister said, but added that Serbian authorities are “in a difficult situation”; with 7-10,000 illegal migrants already in the country, Serbia is reluctant to accommodate more.
Photo: MTI
Over 900 applications were processed last year, and more than 80 people received international protection in 2017, Pintér said.
Answering queries about allegations of police brutality on the border, Pintér said that the EU border agency (FRONTEX) carefully monitors the Hungarian police and found no irregularities. Of all the complaints tried by the independent prosecutor’s office, a single policeman has been found guilty, he said. This policeman was fired immediately, he added.
József Seres, regional director of the Immigration and Asylum Office, said that asylum seekers can only submit their applications in the transit zones since March 28. There, all migrants are examined medically and searched for weapons and dangerous objects. Their personal data and finger prints are recorded, and they are questioned in their mother tongue or a language they speak, Seres said.
Asylum seekers are housed in 5-person containers, Seres said, with areas separated for single men, families and minors between 14 and 18.
Minors under the age of 14, if travelling alone, are provided welfare services, Pintér said.
Budapest, April 4 (MTI) – Brussels leaders treat Hungary like a “rebel” and want to punish the country for its refusal to take in migrants, justice ministry state secretary Pál Völner said on Tuesday.
Völner reacted to an article published in the Tuesday edition of British conservative daily The Times which said Germany, France and up to 21 other countries were preparing to give an ultimatum to Hungary and Poland this year demanding that they either accept their redistribution quota of migrants or leave the European Union.
Völner noted that in December 2015, Hungary had turned to the European Court of Justice over the EU’s mandatory migrant quota scheme, which had been approved by a simple majority of EU interior ministers just a few months earlier despite protest from Hungary. Slovakia also challenged the quota plan with a similar petition to Hungary’s and was soon joined by Poland, Völner told MTI.
The Times quoted a senior diplomatic source from one of the founding EU member states as saying that “we are confident that the ECJ will confirm validation” of the quota system, after which Hungary and Poland would have to abide by the court’s decision or face “both financial and political” consequences.
Völner said such remarks were “in serious violation” of the ECJ’s independence, adding that they gave cause for suspicion that the court was being “dragged into the migrant business”. He said it was clear that Hungary and Poland were being pressured politically, arguing that the petition to the ECJ had been submitted by Hungary and Slovakia, yet the EU’s reported ultimatum targets Poland but not Slovakia. He noted that Austria, which had originally backed the quota plan, but later said it would not take in any more migrants, had not been mentioned in connection with the ultimatum, either.
The ECJ will hold a hearing on Hungary and Slovakia’s petition on May 10, the state secretary noted.
The leftist opposition Democratic Coalition (DK) commented on the article saying that Hungary was “on the verge of a national tragedy” if the statements in the article are true. “By the time the government’s anti-EU propaganda is plastered everywhere, it may very well be that our fate will be solely in the hands of Moscow,” DK MEP Csaba Molnár said, referring to billboards promoting the government’s national consultation. “If Hungary is expelled from the EU, we will forever lose our historic opportunity to close the gap to Europe,” Molnár said. “If this comes to pass, we’ll be hard pressed to find a level of treason in our history equal to that of [Prime Minister] Viktor Orbán’s against Hungary and the Hungarian people,” he added.
The legal border closure which took effect on Tuesday is working well and without problems, the first experiences are positive, and migrants have disappeared from the Serbian side of the border, the Minister of State at the Ministry of Interior told the Hungarian news agency MTI.
Károly Kontrát said that the latest measure also has a “shifting effect”: fewer illegal migrants attempt to enter Hungary, as the news fast spreads among them that they should try some other route, rather than via Hungary.
It likewise plays a part in the positive experiences regarding the reinforced legal border closure that training courses were organised for members of the authorities, including the staff members of the Immigration and Asylum Office, the Minister of State pointed out.
He said: according to Friday data, there are 28 individuals in the transit zone at Röszke, and 18 in the transit zone at Tompa. Sixteen new asylum requests have been submitted in Röszke since Tuesday, and 15 in Tompa. In a breakdown by nationalities, there are 15 Afghans, 11 Iraqis, 4 Turks and 1 Nepali, he added.
Mr Kontrát stressed that no one has been able to enter the territory of Hungary illegally since the entry into force of the reinforced legal border closure because the authorities have prevented this, and the migrants who were apprehended in the interior of the country were accompanied back to the transit zones.
He also remarked that the enlargement of the transit zones had been completed.
The new regulation does not only protect Hungary, but also the whole of the European Union, including the citizens of Western-Europe, he highlighted.
Mr Kontrát said that the leaders of the asylum offices of the Visegrád Four had a meeting on Wednesday and Thursday, as part of which they also visited the Röszke transit zone. Zsuzsanna Végh, Director General of the Immigration and Asylum Office informed the press that the attending foreign office leaders and experts spoke about the reinforced legal border closure in a tone of appreciation, highlighting that it serves the best interests of all Schengen Member States, and laid down in a position: Hungary proceeds in harmony with the EU’s objectives, Mr Kontrát said.
St Julian’s, Malta, March 30 (MTI) – Prime Minister Viktor Orbán on Thursday discussed the issue of dual citizenship for ethnic Hungarians living in Ukraine with Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko in Malta, the prime minister’s press chief said.
In their talks on the sidelines of the European People’s Party congress, Orbán and Poroshenko discussed the need for a bilateral agreement on the dual citizenship issue, Bertalan Havasi told MTI.
Orbán reassured Poroshenko of Hungary’s support for Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity, Havasi said.
The prime minister also stressed Hungary’s commitment to maintaining its energy cooperation with Ukraine, which includes the two countries’ joint fight against the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline.
Budapest, March 28 (MTI) – Ruling Fidesz group leader Lajos Kósa on Tuesday dismissed reports on alleged assaults by police against migrants along Hungary’s southern borders, and labeled those reports as “baseless” and “lies”.
Kósa, who is also head of parliament’s defence and law enforcement committee, said that representatives of European border agency Frontex had made 15 site visits in the past two years, and in all cases “they found the work of the (Hungarian) police in order”. He added that testimonies by migrants suggested that “it is often human smugglers that assault, starve and beat them”.
Earlier in March, Interior Minister Sándor Pintér “categorically rejected” such allegations, in reaction to an article in Swedish paper Aftonbladet, in which refugees who had made it to the Serbian-Hungarian border and representatives of medical charity Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) recount incidents of violence against migrants by Hungarian authorities.
The ministry said in a statement then that if an illegal migrant “gives the slightest implication” during questioning that they had been assaulted, the police submit the minutes of the questioning sessions to the prosecutor’s office. It said that out of the eight such cases that had been referred to the prosecutor’s office, six had already turned out to be “baseless hearsay”.
Warsaw, March 28 (MTI) – “We are getting closer to a sensible migration policy in Europe”, Prime Minister Viktor Orbán said after a Visegrad Four summit meeting in Warsaw on Tuesday, which focussed on a variety of issues, including last week’s EU summit in Rome, Brexit and migration.
Hungary has closed all legal loopholes concerning migration and prepared itself for the possible failure of the migration deal between the EU and Turkey, Orbán told a press conference.
“We are able to halt any wave of migration, no matter its size,” he said.
Hungary has also made the first steps to eliminate the “migrant business”, Orbán said.
“A good few NGOs obviously consider the migrant issue a business matter. For this reason, we will take steps to make their operation fully transparent,” he said.
Orbán said views that link the issue of migration with the imbursement of EU monies are illegitimate.
“Let’s not allow them to intimidate us,” he added.
Asked about Hungary’s recently-amended asylum rules that entered into effect on Tuesday, Orbán said the new laws served to protect EU citizens. He said Austrians and Germans could “sleep sound” because Hungary fulfils its Schengen obligations.
He said Europe would have to get used to such laws generating disputes within the bloc, adding that they had also generated “absurd rulings” by the European Court of Human Rights, referring to a recent ruling by the Strasbourg court ordering Hungary to compensate two Bangladeshi asylum-seekers for wrongly detaining and deporting them. Orbán said such legal proceedings were connected to the “migrant business” of certain NGOs, which he said would have to be investigated.
Photo: Balázs Szecsõdi
Regarding last week’s EU summit in Rome, Orbán said the V4 had demonstrated that they shared a serious joint position on the future of Europe.
The prime minister said the four countries’ economic indices proved that they are no longer “takers” within the EU, but rather the most rapidly growing region of Europe.
He said the declaration signed in Rome was not the end of the debate on the bloc’s future, but rather the entry point into its next phase that will be about ironing out the details. He said Europe now had a general declaration on its future, while the EC is preparing to put forward five packages of proposed legislation. He urged his V4 colleagues to react swiftly to each package.
On the subject of Brexit, Orbán repeated the Hungarian government’s position that the rights of Hungarian citizens working in the UK must be protected and that the EU and Britain should strike a fair exit deal.
Budapest, March 28 (MTI) – The issues of migration and security are by now not only European challenges but global ones too, and no single country can handle them alone, Dimitris Avramopoulos, European commissioner for migration, home affairs and citizenship, told the press in Budapest on Tuesday, after talks with Interior Minister Sándor Pintér and Justice Minister László Trócsányi.
Two years ago scattered initiatives on how to handle the migration wave were put forward, he said. Now, however, there is a comprehensive approach and Hungary is a part of this, the commissioner said, adding that the European Union maintains is dedication to keeping Europe safe.
Efforts to strengthen external borders and start cooperation with third countries have been successful, Avramopoulos said. Thanks to a well-functioning agreement with Turkey, the number of arrivals has dropped drastically. The migrant route through the western Balkans has also stabilised but it is necessary to continue monitoring it and fighting against human smugglers in cooperation with Europol, he added.
A common European border and coastline guard service works with 1,350 officers and talks with Serbia will be started next month in order to enable the guards to also work there, a move that will also benefit Hungary, Avramopoulos said.
New measures requiring checks on all entrants at the EU’s external borders, including EU citizens, will contribute to the security of these borders, he said and expressed hope that fast progress can be made in this area in the next few months.
Photo: MTI
He said that meeting the challenges of migration requires common and coordinated efforts because anything that happens in Syria can also be felt in other countries, including Hungary, not only in Greece and Italy.
Commenting on Tuesday’s talks, he said Hungary’s new legal regulations connected to migration and the new measures to be applied were also discussed. In a meeting held in a friendly and positive atmosphere, it was agreed that a working team of experts would be set up in order to ensure that EU regulations are met and common goals are achieved, he added.
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He said all member states unanimously approved and identified with the EU’s principles and the execution of these was also discussed.
“The EU cannot function well if solidarity is a matter of choice a la carte,” he said. Whenever people who need protection or people who have no right to stay somewhere are told to return to where they have come from, the measure should be implemented in line with EU regulations, he said.
This is the only way to prevent disproportionately large burdens being imposed on certain member states and controls within Schengen reintroduced, Avramopoulos said. He added that he understood why Schengen was so important for Hungary and that Hungarians made many efforts to enable the free movement of people in Europe, so they do not want to return to an era when this was impossible.
Pintér said they agreed that European security should be fortified. They also agreed on what procedures EU citizens and third-country citizens should be subjected to at the external borders of the European Union. On the matter of crossing the so-called green border they lacked complete agreement even if the gap between their standpoints has narrowed. The two sides, however, have agreed to develop a common position by summer.
Trócsányi said he had responded to questions about the necessity and proportionality of Hungary’s new laws related to migration, adding that the government was open to dialogue.
Budapest, March 28 (MTI) – The European Court of Human Rights has banned Hungarian authorities from transferring eight teenagers and a pregnant woman from a refugee asylum near Budapest to the transit zone along the Hungary-Serbia border “to be detained”, the Hungarian Helsinki Committee reported on Tuesday.
The procedure was initiated by the committee last Friday, with regard to Hungary’s new border regulations taking effect, under which “obviously vulnerable clients in need of special treatment” could have been transferred from open camps to closed facilities in the transit zone.
In its ruling, the Strasbourg court put questions to the Hungarian government, to be answered before April 10, as to the timing and legal basis of such transfers, the committee said in its statement. The court also wants to know if services are in place to meet special requirements in the transit zone, if asylum seekers are granted opportunities to study or have access to medical services; are minors to be ensured the same conditions as adults, and if so, is there a legal basis.
Under a government proposal passed into law on March 7, asylum seekers can only submit their applications for such status personally, and in the transit zones at times of an “emergency caused by mass migration”. Applicants, with the exception of unattended minors under 14, are not allowed to leave the transit zone for other parts of Hungary before their applications are processed. The amended rules also apply to asylum seekers whose procedures were under way before the rules took effect, with the exception that they are allowed to leave the transit zone before their cases are closed.
UPDATE
György Bakondi, chief security advisor to the prime minister, voiced incomprehension over the ruling, and said that the Hungarian authorities had not passed any decision over the 8 teenagers and the pregnant woman, therefore “we do not know what decision we should not implement”. He also noted that the ruling was not a verdict but a temporary measure by the Strasbourg court.
In a statement to MTI, the interior ministry said that they had received no official ruling on the matter. The ministry has made no decisions regarding the transfer of the migrants in question, the statement said, and so the Hungarian Helsinki Committee “had no legal grounds” to seek judicial remedy.
Hercegszántó (MTI) – Defence Minister István Simicskó inaugurated new barracks in Hercegszanto, near Hungary’s southern border, that will house soldiers carrying out border protection duties there.
The facility opened on Monday is the fourth of its kind. Each one is capable of housing 150 soldiers and will make Hungary’s border protection efforts more effective, Simicskó told reporters at the site.
Up until now, soldiers serving on the border had stayed either in barracks slightly further north in Hódmezővásárhely or Kaposvár or in rental apartments, the minister noted. Housing the units in the new bases will make them more easily deployable in case of any changes on the border, he added.
Simicskó thanked the Austrian technical contingent that had contributed to the construction of the four bases and the roads connecting them.
Currently there are around 3,000 soldiers performing patrol duties on the southern border, the minister said.
Photo: Károly Árvai / Cabinet Office of the Prime Minister
“The way in which the two migrants escaped from the guarded accommodation in Kiskunhalas on Thursday suggests that it may have been a coordinated, pre-planned operation”, Chief Security Advisor to the Prime Minister György Bakondi said on Hungarian M1 television’s current affairs program.
The police issued a statement on Saturday saying they had apprehended one of the migrants who escaped last week, an 18-year-old Moroccan man. His accomplice, 22-year-old Algerian citizen Alarbi Usamam is still being sought.
Mr. Bakondi said that on Thursday several groups had tried to escape from the accommodation simultaneously, but only these two young men had succeeded. The facility is surrounded by a double fence, which they climbed over, he added.
The Chief Security Advisor also said that in principle the two men were placed in the guarded accommodation because they were suspected not only of crossing the border illegally, but also of some other offence. The reason for their escape was probably to enable them to leave Hungary, Mr. Bakondi added.
The Government Spokesperson takes the view that political attacks are being levelled at the law tightening the legal border closure.
Zoltán Kovács said on the programme 180 minutes of Kossuth Rádió that the “choreography” that we have seen so many times in the past few years in the context of migration is being repeated once more: “so-called human rights organisations” funded from abroad level unfounded criticisms against the Hungarian Government, and Brussels bureaucrats as well as the left-wing and liberal parties in Brussels give the “appropriate response” to these criticisms.
The Government Spokesperson said that they will prove that the legislation is fully in harmony with the current regulations of the European Union (EU).
Mr Kovács is of the opinion: life “has demonstrated in recent years” that migrants abuse the possibility of applying for political asylum “as a matter of course”, which they use in order to disappear within the Schengen borders. He highlighted: we must resort to all possible means to ensure that illegal immigrants should not be allowed to enter the territory of the EU.
The Government Spokesperson also spoke about the Paks II project, pointing out: the project is the key to cheap electricity for the next fifty to sixty years.
Budapest, March 7 (MTI) – The influx of migrants has ebbed but has not come to an end, Prime Minister Viktor Orbán said on Tuesday at an oath-taking ceremony for “border-hunter” police. “We are still under attack,” Orbán said.
The pressure on Hungary’s borders will not cease in the next few years because millions more people are preparing to set off in the hope of a better life, Orbán said. “We can only rely on ourselves,” he said, adding that the European Union could not be relied upon and “they only make our job more difficult”.
The migration crisis will last until its causes are removed, he said.
“It will remain on the agenda until it is recognised everywhere that migration is a Trojan horse for terrorism,” the prime minister added.
Orbán asked the new border police to act firmly but humanely and follow the rule of the law.
Photo: MTI
He added that the regulations also apply to migrants who want to cross the border illegally. “This is the reality and cannot be overridden by any form of whining human rights nonsense”.
Hungary is currently one of the safest countries in Europe, the prime minister said.
“If the world sees that we can protect our borders, that the enforced border seal is impossible to penetrate and that we continue to insist on our laws — and we do not waver for a second — then nobody will attempt to come to Hungary illegally,” he said. It is reasonable that only people whose identity and motives have been clarified should enter Hungary, he added.
“We Hungarians want a Europe where we can live our own Hungarian lives. The number one condition for such an appealing Hungary is security, which requires laws and people who are dedicated to protecting them,” he added.
The government decided last August to increase the number of border police by 3,000 and recruitment started on Sept. 1.
The first group of new recruits took their oath on Jan. 12 and an additional 462 took their oath today at a ceremony also attended by Interior Minister Sándor Pintér and Defence Minister István Simicskó.
Budapest, March 6 (MTI) – Hungary’s interior ministry on Monday “categorically rejected” reports in domestic and foreign media alleging that Hungarian border police regularly commit violence against migrants.
The ministry reacted to a fresh article by Swedish paper Aftonbladet, in which refugees who had made it to the Serbian-Hungarian border and representatives of medical charity Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) recount incidents of violence against migrants by Hungarian authorities.
The ministry said in a statement that if an illegal migrant “gives the slightest implication” during questioning that they had been assaulted, the police submit the minutes of the questioning sessions to the prosecutor’s office. It said that out of the eight such cases that had been referred to the prosecutor’s office, six had already turned out to be “baseless hearsay”.
As part of collaborative operations organised by European border agency Frontex, there are currently 36 guest police officers conducting border patrols in Hungary, but so far none of them have reported any incidents of human rights abuses or violence against migrants, it added.
Although Aftonbladet said it was unable to verify the validity of the personal accounts given in the article, the media reports it as fact that migrants are abused in Hungary, the ministry said.
Earlier in the day, Gabor Fodor, head of the opposition Liberal Party, called on the government to launch an investigation into the allegations made in the paper. Referring to the reports in Aftonbladet, Fodor said that many migrants in northern Serbia had been treated with injuries suggesting that Hungary’s border police had “applied physical coercion against people attempting entry”. He also noted that the problem had been reported earlier.
Parliament will vote on a set of amendment proposals to Hungary’s asylum regulations on Tuesday. If passed into law, the bill before parliament would prohibit asylum-seekers from leaving the transit zones set up on the border until their cases are ruled on. The bill also proposes that authorities should be allowed to take illegal migrants back to the transit zones from any given spot of the country, regardless of where they have been apprehended. Under Hungary’s current asylum laws, illegal entrants can only be escorted back if stopped within eight kilometres of the border.
UPDATE
The national police headquarters said on its website that during a Frontex meeting in February, member states were presented a letter dated January 24 by the organisation’s Director Fabrice Leggeri which showed that disproportionate use of force by police had not been reported and the allegations about migrants’ human rights being violated could not be confirmed. Leggeri added that representatives of the European Commission paid a visit to the Hungarian-Serbian border on October 18-19, 2016 and they found no proof of police abusing their power, the statement added.
Vienna, March 6 (MTI) – Hungary’s fence on its border with Serbia protects the European Union, not Hungary, government spokesman Zoltán Kovács said at the Hungarian embassy in Vienna on Monday.
If Hungary succeeds in stopping illegal migration into the EU with the fence, then there is no need for the traffic jams on the Hungarian-Austrian border caused by tightened controls there, as the fence would also protect Austria, Kovács told MTI following a press event held at the embassy.
Hungary’s government has announced that it will install a second fence along the country’s 150km border section with Serbia by May 1. The second barrier will be equipped with surveillance cameras, thermal cameras and other security tools.
Kovács said the fence served the purpose of keeping out illegal migrants, which he said was an aim Austria, too, wanted to achieve.
Speaking about the technical specifications of the soon-to-be-installed second fence, the government spokesman said it will be charged with a low, non-fatal voltage, which will transmit a signal to authorities if an attempt is made to damage the fence.
Kovács said illegal migration could not be curbed by internal border controls, adding that Austria’s border controls were not a substitute for the protection of the EU’s Schengen borders.
Budapest, March 5 (MTI) – Hungarian police seized 20.7 kilos of marijuana from a car of a Montenegrin driver at the Röszke border crossing with Serbia, national police said on Sunday.
The drug was found hidden behind the vehicle’s front fender and in the cassis underneath one of the seats in 40 packs, the police said.
The haul’s market value is estimated at 40 million forints (EUR 131,000).
