The United Nations’ migration package equals to “betraying Europe” because the plan is “in conflict with the interests of the people”, Foreign Minister Péter Szijjártó told a press conference held jointly with Heinz-Christian Strache, the vice-chancellor of Austria, in Vienna on Wednesday.
Szijjártó insisted that the package would pose a “serious danger” for Europe as it is “aimed at legalising illegal migration as a fundamental human right” and said that Hungary would vote against the proposal at next year’s UN general assembly session.
Szijjártó congratulated Austria for not supporting the package either.
The foreign minister requested Austria’s assistance in ensuring legal border crossing between the two countries “possibly through as many crossing stations as possible”.
Strache said that Hungary had set an example in 2015 through protecting the European Union’s Schengen borders. He added that he considered the “Soros-Sargentini report” as invalid and argued that abstentions should have been considered as votes cast in the procedure when the European Parliament adopted the document.
Concerning the UN package, Strache said that Austria disagreed with 17 out of its 23 points. Austria would vote against the package to prevent “bad development”, he said, adding that the line between legal and illegal migration must not be removed.
Strache also said that
Austria had just extended its border controls by another six months. “As long as the EU borders are not permanently secured, we need to protect our borders ourselves,” he said.
The majority of European Union member states rejected the latest proposal to enhance the role of EU border agency Frontex in controlling the bloc’s external borders at the Salzburg summit, the government spokesman said late on Thursday.
As we wrote yesterday, “there is no need for Frontex to protect the Hungarian border in our place,” PM Orbán said in Salzburg, read more HERE.
Zoltán Kovács told public news channel M1 that the proposal — which he said had been put forward by German Chancellor Angela Merkel and not the European Commission — “will practically mean that member states will have to give up a part of their sovereignty”.
This was why, he said, Hungary had presented its own proposal to the EU’s Austrian presidency, namely that Frontex should only take over a member state’s border protection duties if the country in question is incapable of or unwilling to protect its Schengen border. In such cases, the member state’s Schengen membership should be suspended, Kovács said.
He said the EU would “try to force through” Merkel’s proposal before next year’s European parliamentary elections in an effort to “remove” the issue of migration from the final stretch of the campaign.
On another subject, Kovács said
European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker made a proposal to expel Fidesz from the European People’s Party while Prime Minister Viktor Orbán was busy meeting Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz. Kovács added that this meeting had been announced beforehand.
Referring to the issue of whether abstentions were counted or disregarded under European parliamentary rules in the vote to open the Article 7 procedure against Hungary, the head of the Prime Minister’s Office said on Thursday that the government’s assessment was that the Sargentini report did not receive the required two-thirds majority.
Under the EU’s Lisbon Treaty, a vote by two-thirds of MEPs would have been required for the report’s approval, and abstentions should have also been taken into account in the vote tally, Gergely Gulyás told a press conference. With the abstentions counted,
the report would have failed to secure a two-thirds majority, he said.
Gulyás said he did not believe that the EP’s house rules contained any provisions saying that abstentions should not be counted in a vote.
The procedure cannot move forward until Hungary settles the legal dispute over the matter,
Gulyás added. The cabinet will meet to discuss EU-related matters on Monday and it will decide on steps to take in connection with the report on the rule of law in Hungary drafted by Green MEP Judith Sargentini.
The head of the Prime Minister’s Office Gergely Gulyás, photo: MTI
The minister underlined the government’s view that the report was not really about the rule of law. Instead, the issue of migration was the factor that determined its adoption, he said.
He said
the government had refuted every single critical remark in the report.
The government considers it “unacceptable” that the report includes issues which Hungary had already settled with the European Commission, he said. If these cases can later reappear as “charges” in another EU document, then the commission’s role of “guardian of the Treaties” loses its meaning, Gulyás argued.
He said “pro-migration” politicians were currently the majority in the EP, and this was why next year’s European parliamentary elections — where voters will get to have their say on migration — would be crucial.
“We hope that the forces opposed to migration will make up the majority in the European Parliament formed n 2019, or that at least they can make up ground on the pro-migration forces,” Gulyás said.
Asked about the legal steps the government planned to take over the report, Gulyás said the “most likely” step would be to request the European court to declare the vote invalid.
Asked to comment on a plan by Hungary’s leftist parties to organise a demonstration over the approval of the Sargentini report for Sunday, Gulyás said everyone in Hungary has the right to take part in demonstrations, “unlike when these parties were in power”.
Asked about whether Fidesz would still support Manfred Weber in his quest to become president of the European Commission, Gulyás said no formal decision had yet been made to support him.
“But clearly we can’t act as if Manfred Weber, in serving his own personal ambitions, had not voted against his own party for a report he knew to be a lie.”
He said it was doubtful the Sargentini report would have any kind of impact outside of Europe. Regarding a closed meeting of the European People’s Party group, he said even Fidesz’s staunchest critics did not deny that the report was weak and “teeming with lies”.
Asked about German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s comment that protection of the EU’s external borders should be strengthened in order to combat illegal migration, and furthermore, some national competences should be transferred to the EU’s Frontex, Gulyás said he disagreed, adding that the Hungarian government insisted the Schengen rules should be upheld.
He said that if a member of the Schengen zone is incapable of protecting the external border, then either it should turn to other Schengen countries with a request for help or, if it fails to do so, their membership of the convention should be suspended.
On the subject of a recent report compiled by the United Nations denouncing reprisals against human rights activists in 38 countries, including Hungary, Gulyás said
the report was the UN’s way of “exacting revenge on Hungary”.
There are currently 70 NGOs in Hungary, he said, adding that there were no practices or laws in place hindering their operations.
The German government is now consistent in its opposition to illegal migration, Gergely Gulyás, head of the Prime Minister’s Office, said after talks with German Chancellery Minister Helge Braun in Berlin on Wednesday.
Speaking to public media, Gulyás said Braun had confirmed in their talks that “anyone defending Europe’s external borders is a friend of Germany”.
The Hungarian government is in favour of taking action against all forms of illegal migration, “and even the German government holds a consistent stance on this now”, he added.
Berlin now says that members of the Schengen zone must fulfil their obligations of protecting the bloc’s external borders, Gulyás said. This means that though Hungary’s position on illegal migration has not changed, the two countries have moved closer on the issue, the PM’s Office chief said, adding that Hungary’s measures aimed at stopping illegal migration also protect Germany.
On the topic of bilateral political ties, Gulyás said that
in recent years they had changed “at least as much as Germany’s position on the issue of migration has”. Looking at the various positions of the country’s co-ruling Christian Democratic Union, “in a lot of areas, we see the same priorities that we’ve been talking about for three years,” he said.
But Gulyás added that Hungary and Germany still disagree on certain issues, such as integration or parallel societies. “But this is another reason why we emphasise that we can live with positions that are different from our own,” he added.
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Every nation must decide for itself whether it wants to take in immigrants, and the Hungarian voters have made their decision clear, Gulyás said.
Concerning bilateral economic ties, Gulyás said German businesses today have the highest ever level of confidence in investing in Hungary, adding that the recently announced plan by BMW to build a plant in Debrecen in eastern Hungary was a testament to this.
He welcomed that after a plant built by Audi in the country’s western region and by Daimler in central Hungary,
BMW as a third major German carmaker has now looked to the east with its investment.
This demonstrates well that German businesses make rational decisions taking into account the possibility to tap on a supply of skilled Hungarian labour, he said.
A new building complex for Hungary’s operational police force was inaugurated in south-western Hungary’s Nagykanizsa on Wednesday.
Police chief János Balogh said the new building complex built on the site of a former border guard barracks offered “decent accommodation” for “border-hunter” police and would make the profession attractive in a region with a high demand for labour.
The complex cost 5.7 billion forints (EUR 17.6m) to build and comprises two-bed studio flats equipped with bathrooms and kitchenettes,
Balogh said.
Operational police officers have also taken possession of new bases in Győr, Szeged and Szombathely, he said, adding that another one will be inaugurated in Pécs in a few weeks’ time.
Károly Papp, public security director at the interior ministry, said at the inauguration ceremony that
the problem of illegal migration has not been solved.
He argued that there were still thousands of people waiting along the Western Balkan route to enter the European Union illegally.
Hungary is ready to help protect the borders of countries along the new migration route by sending police units if necessary, the prime minister’s chief security advisor said on Thursday.
The new migrant route starts out from Albania and goes through Montenegro, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Croatia and Slovenia to Austria and Italy,
György Bakondi told public broadcaster M1.
At a meeting on Wednesday focusing on the protection of the borders of countries along the new route, the police chiefs of the Western Balkan countries agreed that the borders should be protected by the military, he said.
The interior ministers of the Western Balkan countries are scheduled to meet soon to decide on how to support the border protection efforts, Bakondi said.
He said
a growing number of illegal migrants were entering Europe via the Turkish-Greek border, with the Mediterranean passage having become less active.
The nationality composition of migrants arriving in Europe has also changed with more and more Iranian, Bangladeshi, Pakistani and Afghan citizens attempting to reach the continent, Bakondi added.
Germany has clearly turned its migration policy around and the difference between the positions of the Hungarian and German governments “is not as big as it was before”, the minister-elect to head the Prime Minister’s Office said in Berlin on Wednesday.
“The only thing we now have to find common ground on is that our rejection of all types of mandatory redistribution schemes is ethically and — because of the observance of the Schengen rules and the Lisbon Treaty — legally warranted,” Gergely Gulyás told public media.
“We disagree in terms of the mandatory redistribution [of migrants], but this is not a disagreement based on principle but rather one that stems from the differences in our circumstances,” Gulyás said.
He said
Germany “had acted quite irresponsibly in 2015” by taking in more than one million migrants.
“Now it wants to share the consequences of that decision with others,” he said. Hungary disagrees with this goal, but the two countries do agree, however, that the European Union’s external borders must be protected, Gulyás said. “Unfortunately we cannot yet see if any sanctions would be imposed on countries that fail to fulfil this duty,” he added.
Gulyás said
Hungary refuses to accept any policy that approaches the issue of migration from the idea of the mandatory redistribution of migrants.
Hungary believes that the starting point on this issue should be the protection of the bloc’s external borders, because “this is the guarantee that the trouble that came out of the decisions made in 2015 cannot escalate,” he said.
Gulyás is in Berlin to open a conference on Hungary’s place in Europe organised by the Friends of Hungary Foundation and the Philidor Institute.
In the next few years we will continue to have to engage in extended international debates in a number of areas, and also for this reason it is not irrelevant who will take charge of the country between 2018 and 2022, the Justice Minister stressed at a Budapest forum organised for members of the public on Monday, highlighting that today Hungary has a strong international reputation.
László Trócsányi stressed that only those can earn the latter “who have an opinion”. In answer to a question, he indicated that EU membership is “crucial”, but that “does not mean that we have to say yes to everything”.
Exiting the EU is out of the question, the Minister stated in answer to another question, mentioning that with Brexit Hungary has lost an ally as Britain likewise did not share the vision of a United States of Europe.
He stressed that in the campaign they must render an account of the government’s activities during the period between 2010 and 2018 when they seek to secure the trust of the electorate for the next four years. He observed that in 2010 Fidesz took over the leadership of a country which was “in an incredible state of economic, political and moral crisis”.
He cited as an example that the budget deficit at 9 per cent was more than triple the current rate, there was corruption, an ongoing struggle between the head of state and the prime minister and a state of uncertainty as regarded the government.
In the context of the latter, he mentioned that there were three prime ministers and five justice ministers over eight years.
Mr Trócsányi contrasted this with the fact that “we have managed to put the economy back in order” by reducing the deficit of the budget, raising the number of people in employment by 800,000, moving the economy from a services-oriented phase to a production-centred one, and building a workfare society.
He highlighted that on economic issues we also had to engage in battles abroad, fighting the strong interest representation capabilities of multinational corporations. Meanwhile with its family policy measures the government has moved demographic trends in a positive direction and has reunited the nation in a constitutional sense by granting Hungarians beyond the borders citizenship and voting rights.
Migration poses a major challenge for Europe, he stated, observing that “Hungary honours its international obligations at all times, but has a marked opinion on the issue of migration”.
He took the view that we must prevent those desiring a better life from setting out for Europe by channelling funds to the conflict zones.
According to Mr Trócsányi, these days we are observing the “crumbling” of the Schengen system, despite the fact that the right of the free movement of persons is one of the most important achievements. Quite evidently “many EU governments disagree with us” on this matter but a considerable percentage of their citizens agree with the Hungarian policy related to migration, he added.
Altogether 82 percent of Hungarians support Hungary’s border fence and just under 80 percent oppose the European Union’s migrant quota scheme, according to a fresh survey by the Nézőpont Institute.
The survey found that the border fence also has strong support among the voters of the opposition parties.
Fully 85 percent of the supporters of Jobbik approved of the fence, as did 74 percent of LMP’s, 65 percent of the Democratic Coalition’s and 49 percent of the Socialist Party’s voters.
On average, 63 percent of opposition voters agree with the government on the EU’s migrant quota scheme. Among Jobbik supporters, 76 percent reject it, compared with 65 percent of LMP’s, 50 percent of DK’s and 46 percent of the Socialists’ supporters.
Nézőpont also found that 68 percent of Hungarians believe that of Hungary’s political parties, ruling Fidesz is the most strongly opposed to immigration. Fully 53 percent of the survey’s respondents said that there were opposition parties that are pro-migration.
Nézőpont also surveyed the other three Visegrad Group countries — the Czech Republic, Poland and Slovakia — for their support for Hungary’s border fence.
It found that 60 percent of Poles and Slovaks and 55 percent of Czechs had friends and acquaintances who support the fence.
Nézőpont conducted the phone poll of 1,000 people in Hungary between March 9 and 14. It surveyed 1,000 people in each of the V4 countries between Jan. 18 and Feb. 13.
The friendship between Austria and Hungary has been restored, Foreign Minister Péter Szijjártó told a press conference after talks with his Austrian counterpart Karin Kneissl on Thursday.
The two countries “are connected in thousands of ways” and economic cooperation “is extremely important”, Szijjártó said.
The two officials agreed that the root causes of migration must be addressed and that it was possible to protect Europe’s sea borders.
Austria is Hungary’s second most important trading partner, with bilateral turnover exceeding 10 billion euros last year. Austrian companies represent the fourth largest investor community in Hungary, employing 75,000 people, he added.
Bilateral ties saw “some serious disputes” in recent years, mostly concerning migration, he said.
“But this unworthy situation has been successfully resolved” following the election of a new government in Vienna.
He welcomed the current government’s focus on dialogue and friendship, leaving behind the “skirmishes” that embittered bilateral relations in the past.
Szijjártó said migration was a focus of the talks. Hungary considers the quota system a “disgraceful failure”. Emphasis should be placed on border protection, he said.
The security of Hungarians is the top priority, he said. “We will protect the border and maintain the right to decide who enters the country and with whom we live.”
The minister called the United Nation’s migration package “outrageous”, adding that Hungary wants it rewritten and amended.
Instead of a migration-friendly UN proposal, an anti-migration document is needed, Szijjártó said, adding that Hungary will formally submit its proposals presented at the conference earlier in the day.
He said EU expansion was also a topic of discussion at his meeting with Kneissl. Countries of the Western Balkans can rely on Hungary’s support in this process, Szijjártó said. Commenting on Schengen, he said the zone’s survival was among the most important conditions for maintaining Europe’s economic competitiveness.
Kneissl, minister for foreign affairs and European integration, noted that Austria will assume the EU’s rotating presidency on July 1. The presidency’s focus will be subsidiarity, she said, adding that the EU would have to consult member states on the issues of migration and refugees.
She said the Western Balkans are part of Europe both in historical and geographical senses, so Austria considers it an obligation to carry forward the issue of the bloc’s expansion.
She also said that Austria recognises the distinction between legal and illegal migration.
Kneissl noted the dispute between Austria and the European Commission concerning the expansion of Hungary’s Paks nuclear power plant and said this was not a bilateral issue.
Asked about the Visegrád Group and whether expansion of the four-nation cooperation was on the agenda, Szijjarto said important cooperation was taking place between Austria and the V4 but there were no plans to broaden the group.
Migration poses the greatest threat to Europe’s future, which should be protected, Prime Minister Viktor Orbán said in Vienna on Tuesday after talks with Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz.
“There exists a Christian culture and a way of life, which we would like to protect”, Orbán told a press conference, stressing the need to preserve Europe’s identity and Christian foundations.
The Schengen regime can also be protected “if we want to protect it”, Orbán said. He emphasised that the external borders of the Schengen area should remain closed while the internal ones should continue to be kept open.
Orbán said Kurz had been a “good partner” to Hungary on the issue of migration even back during his tenure as foreign minister, noting that Kurz had agreed with the need to seal the Western Balkan migration route. When things got tough for Hungary, Austria sent police and border patrol officers to help protect the southern border, he noted.
The prime minister said he and Kurz were in agreement that migrant quotas were an ineffective way to handle the migration crisis.
No one who entered Europe illegally can be allowed to stay, the prime minister said.
Orbán said he did not see a strong enough commitment from countries of the inner Schengen area to protect the Schengen rules. He said Europe’s migrant redistribution mechanism “is also destroying Schengen”, arguing that the EU was also trying to force it onto countries that protect their borders from illegal migrants. Orbán expressed hope that the EU would “get back on the right path” in terms of the migration issue. This is why he said the debate on a new asylum system would be important, adding that it could not be handled independently from border protection.
Kurz agreed that the EU’s migrant redistribution scheme had proven ineffective and that illegal migration must be stopped. Hungary and Austria “are heading in the same direction” when it comes to protecting the EU’s external borders. Kurz called for a new European asylum system and said that receiving countries should be the ones to decide whom they want to admit.
The chancellor also agreed on the need to preserve and strengthen the Schengen system. He noted that that the abolition of internal borders was one of the crucial founding elements of the European Union.
On another subject, Orbán said Europe was in the middle of a realignment.
One of the elements of this process is central Europe’s transformation into the EU’s engine of growth, he insisted. “Over the next ten years, it’ll be our job to do everything we can for the continued strengthening of central Europe, so that it can become a key region in the EU,” Orbán said.
Commenting on Austria’s announcement earlier this month that it will lodge an appeal with the European Court of Justice over the planned upgrade of the Paks nuclear power plant, Orbán said the project was not an Austrian-Hungarian issue but a European one to be settled by European legal forums. He said that Hungary would make every possible effort to ensure that the difference in opinions about nuclear energy does not harm bilateral relations.
Outside the Federal Chancellery Orbán was met by Greenpeace activists protesting against the Paks upgrade.
Commenting on Austria’s family support system, Orbán said he had asked Kurz to ensure that Hungarians working in Austria receive fair treatment. The European Commission is the guardian of treaties and if it learns of developments that go against the European Treaty, it is obliged to take action. Brussels will fulfil its duty and once an EU decision is made, “we will accept it”, he said.
Orbán noted the significance of motorway links between the two countries and successful economic cooperation, adding that Austria is one of the most important investors in Hungary and both sides profit from close business ties.
Asked about his meeting with Vice-Chancellor Heinz-Christian Strache, Orbán said Strache’s Freedom Party of Austria (FPO) played an important role in the Austrian government. He called it natural that he would meet every important political leader. As FPO holds security-related portfolios, the talks will also cover the issue of security, he added.
In response to another question, Orbán said “experience shows that whenever Liberals are not included in a government,” they say it is the end of democracy. “We will refuse any ideological trend to identify itself with democracy,” he said, adding that “real democracy is democracy without an attribute”.
An informal meeting of the European Union’s ministers of interior and justice was held in Sofia on 25-26 January 2018. On the interior day of the meeting, the Hungarian delegation was led by Minister of interior Dr. Sándor Pintér.
At the informal meeting, the EU interior ministers discussed the future schedule for talks on the reform of the Common European Asylum System, with particular emphasis on the proposal for the reform of the Dublin Regulation. In its speech,
Hungary stressed that the goal of the European Union must be to stop the flow of migration and that the prevention of illegal migration must already begin in countries of origin and transit countries.
Joint EU migration policy efforts must serve this goal. It is important from Hungary’s perspective that the wording of key legislative proposals of this nature, such as the reform of the Dublin system, should only occur once a political agreements has been reached. The European Commission has made it clear that the main aims with relation to the reform of the Dublin system must be developed based on consensus.
The interior ministers discussed the Global Compact for migration within the framework of a working lunch. Hungary is consistently against the issuing of statement that could be construed as encouragement for people who are not satisfied with their live to being flowing into Europe. According to our standpoint, it is the sovereign right of every single country to decide who it will allow into its territory. Based on the experience of preparatory processes, the UN is not paying enough attention to the need to handle the causes of irregular migration, or to the obligations of source countries.
The ministers also discussed efforts to facilitate the realisation of the Integrated Border Management System.
Hungary stressed that it is protecting the EU’s external borders based on the EU norms currently in force. It is the task of every EU member state to protect the external borders of the European Union and to make them impermeable in accordance with the regulations that are currently in force. However, based on the experiences of the migration crisis, cooperation with source and transit countries must receive priority attention during the practical realisation of the Integrated Border Management System.
Hungary has not accepted and will not take in any migrants, Foreign Minister Péter Szijjártó said in an interview to Saturday’s issue of daily Magyar Hírlap, emphasising the difference between accepting refugees based on the Geneva Refugee Convention and illegal mass immigration.
Szijjártó said Hungary complies with all international agreements including the one on the protection of the Schengen borders and the Geneva Convention. Those who received subsidiary protection submitted their application and had it assessed by the authorities in accordance with the international regulations. They can stay in Hungary as long as they are under threat in their home country but after that danger has passed, they must return home, the minister said.
Szijjártó said this had nothing to do with illegal migration as the Geneva Convention does not concern illegal mass immigration and has nothing to do with the redistribution quota scheme either.
“Our position is clear: we have not accepted and will not take in any migrants because no illegal migrants are allowed into Hungary … This is why we built a fence and spent one billion euros on border protection and this is why we oppose the quota scheme,” the minister said.
Szijjártó also told the paper that there was now a major opportunity to rebuild US-Hungarian political relations. While trade and defence relations have been excellent, “political relations were rather poor”, he said. However, newly appointed Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs Wess Mitchell considers US-central European relations to be of strategic importance.
Szijjártó said he had conducted several hours of talks with Wess Mitchell during his latest visit to Washington, discussing, among other things, genuine bilateral foreign policy issues.
“In the past eight years, this was the first time I felt that we were treated fairly, with mutual respect, as an important partner, rather than a small central European country, whose representative came to Washington to be lectured. This is a completely new attitude,” the minister said.
A light aircraft carrying 11 migrants entered Hungarian air space and landed near the town of Kállósemjén, in northeast Hungary, the Szabolcs-Szatmár-Bereg County Police Department reported on the police.hu website on Tuesday.
Police found the aircraft in an agricultural area after being alerted to its presence by an off-duty officer.
The migrants, comprising three Afghan and eight Vietnamese nationals, were apprehended near Kállósemjén following an extensive search that included the use of search dogs and thermal cameras.
Police are investigating the incident as a human smuggling case.
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2018 will be the year for restoring the people’s will, Prime Minister Viktor Orbán stated on Friday in the Seeon Cloister Church in Germany, on the second day of the three-day meeting of the Bundestag members of the Christian Social Union (CSU).
After their talks, the Hungarian Prime Minister held a joint press conference with Bavarian Minister-President Horst Seehofer where he said that the European people have a clear will.
“The people’s will is clear”: the people do not want to live under the threat of terrorism, they want security, they want their borders to be protected, and they want their leaders to take those people out of the Schengen Area who have no reason to be there. They should be taken back to a place where they can start a new life, he added.
Mr Orbán stressed: “Right from the beginning we have stood on the foundations of the protection of the borders and compliance with the Schengen regulations. We stood on the foundations of the Schengen regulations, built a fence, for instance, and reinforced our border controls when there were places in Europe where chaos and illegality were being celebrated”, he said.
He stated that the migrant issue had become a democracy problem in Europe, and pointed out that the European people have a clear will.
Mr Orbán said he highlighted at the meeting that the issue of the past few years was whether it was possible to open the way for and enforce the people’s will.
Leaders in many places in Europe did not do what the people wanted, the Hungarian Prime Minister said, observing that “at times like this a state of confusion emerges in politics”, and this contradiction must be resolved somehow.
“I told my friends in Bavaria that, in my view,
2018 will be the year for restoring the people’s will in Europe”,
Mr Orbán stressed.
The European people will enforce their will and ensure step by step that decisions are made which serve their best interests on the issue of migration, he pointed out.
The Prime Minister said he had learnt a great deal from Horst Seehofer. One of the important rules is that no rights of any kind can be built on the foundations of illegality, and laws must at all times be observed to the letter. The greater the pressure and challenge, the more precisely they must be observed, he added.
Hungary understood that rule, the Prime Minister pointed out.
Mr Orbán said he made it clear to his Bavarian partners that Hungary continues to stand on the foundations of legality.
“You should continue to look upon me as captain of Bavaria’s border stronghold. Bavaria’s southern border lies at the Serbian-Hungarian border, and when we protect that border, we also protect Bavaria”, he stated.
Bavarians and Hungarians are tied together by a long-standing and deep relationship: so long-standing that it stretches all the way from the family of the first Hungarian Christian royal family to the Audi factory in Győr, he stressed. He said that the intensity of this relationship reaches the depths of friendship.
“I have never observed any ill will in Bavaria towards the Hungarian people, Hungary or the Hungarian Government. I have always had sincere, open and fair talks here, and today was no exception”, he said.
I do not wish to be disrespectful and interfere with German internal politics, Mr Orbán stated.
He said that “our posture is fundamentally a posture of respect”.
Photo: MTI
German debates will be conducted by German people, and German decisions will be adopted by German politicians.
“I wish you all the very best with the talks regarding this”, he added.
The Prime Minister said that they also spoke about economic issues. Bilateral relations are excellent, but they found new areas to which relations could be extended, he indicated.
The parties also touched upon the future of the European economy. Mr Orbán concluded that there is full agreement between CSU and the Hungarian governing parties.
One cannot live off someone else’s money, and everyone has to generate their own performance.
Sovereign debts must be reduced, budget deficits must be kept below 3 per cent, and everyone has to carry out labour market reforms at home: this is every Member State’s “homework”, he listed.
This national responsibility must be taken on. One cannot support reforms which would replace national responsibility with national irresponsibility and would want to dissolve national responsibility into some kind of pan-European responsibility, he stressed.
Mr Orbán thanked Horst Seehofer for his “splendid” December speech. This voice had been expected for a very long time. The statement that Bavaria was, is and will remain a Christian country was received with appreciation.
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“As far as I can see the debates on the future have common intellectual foundations, and so I expect exciting and productive discussions in the future as well”, he said.
Bavaria’s example has always been encouragement for Hungary. We too would like to be as successful as the Bavarians. We are seeking to find that path which takes time, but the Hungarian economy is on a path today that we can be proud of, Mr Orbán highlighted.
He said he had made it clear that they had succeeded in building the structure of the Hungarian economy on the foundations of the performance of the Hungarian people.
“We are asking for partnership, and looking for business cooperation”, the Hungarian Prime Minister concluded his speech.
Photo: MTI
Seehofer said he would head efforts to intensify cooperation between Bavaria and central European nations.
Bavaria has a vested interest in closer ties as its trade turnover with the Visegrad Four countries surpassed even the one between France and Britain, he said.
Alexander Dobrindt, leader of the CSU parliamentary group, that “Hungary is defending [the EU’s] external borders in line with the rule of law”. As a member of the EU, the Schengen area and NATO, Hungary “is an important negotiator of strategic issues on European level”.
According to the official programme, Mr Orbán delivered a speech at the group meeting of CSU during the course of the day, and then had a private meeting with Manfred Weber, Chairman of the European People’s Party (EPP) group at the European Parliament.
The lunch held jointly with Horst Seehofer was also attended by Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade Péter Szijjártó, Antal Rogán, the Minister heading the Cabinet Office of the Prime Minister, Minister of Human Capacities Zoltán Balog, Gergely Gulyás, head of the parliamentary group of Fidesz and József Szájer, Member of the European Parliament for Fidesz.
Hungary’s foreign minister has dismissed criticism by the head of Germany’s SPD party Martin Schulz levelled against Prime Minister Viktor Orbán and his migration policy, saying that Schulz’s accusations were unfounded.
In an interview with a German newspaper, Schulz called it “unacceptable” that some EU member states were making great efforts to accommodate refugees while others were derelict in their duties.
Szijjártó said Schulz constantly attacked Hungary for its policy which “protected all Germans”. Szijjártó said he had hoped that Schulz, having returned “from the Brussels bubble to German reality”, would face up to that reality and see that his charges against Hungary were wrong.
“But it became clear that these hopes were unfounded,” Szijjártó said.
“Martin Schulz is unaware of the basic facts. Still, as a citizen of a country that enjoys the benefits of Hungary’s efforts to protect the external borders of the Schengen area by enforcing European law, he is in a comfortable position,” Szijjarto said, adding that Hungary had spent 1 billion euros on border defence measures.
“The European Commission has rejected awarding partial compensation for this amount even though Hungarian border protection protects both Germany and the European Union as a whole,” he said,
adding that the lack of solidarity was not on Hungary’s part but on the side of the EU.
The year ahead will be a critical one in terms of security, György Bakondi, the PM’s chief security advisor told a press conference on Friday.
While the security situation in Hungary improved over the course of 2017, it gradually deteriorated throughout the rest of Europe, Bakondi insisted, citing criminal and terrorist acts carried out on the continent.
Bakondi said that the European Commission wanted to write its rules on the redistribution of migrants among member states without an upper limit into legislation by the summer.
The continent’s migrant situation affects Europeans’ sense of security, along with their political positions, as evidenced by last year’s election results, he said.
Looking back it can be said that Hungary’s analysis of the migrant situation was correct and realistic, as were the measures implemented by the government, Bakondi said. The procedures undertaken by Hungary were lawful and the law enforcement developments necessary, he added.
As we wrote yesterday, the European Commission is applying double standards by singling out the refusal to implement European Union refugee quotas by three member states, a government official said. (Read more HERE.)
Security will be the chief value in Europe in 2018, and also for the Hungarian Government the Hungarian people’s security will be the top priority, Károly Kontrát, Parliamentary State Secretary of the Ministry of Interior said at his press conference which he held jointly with Tamás Vargha, Parliamentary State Secretary of the Ministry of Defence.
Mr Kontrát highlighted at the press conference that due to the pressure of migration weighing heavily upon Europe and the permanent threat of terrorism, in 2018 the Government will allocate even more funding for guaranteeing the Hungarian people’s security, and supporting the operation and development of the counter-terrorism and national security services. funding will be allocated for the purposes of managing mass immigration.
“By protecting our borders, we are not only protecting the security of the Hungarian people, but that of the whole of Europe as this is how we are honouring our obligations arising from our Schengen membership”,
he said. He added that according to their calculations, by the beginning of March 2018 some three thousand new border guards will start serving.
He said that while in a number of countries in Europe the people’s sense of security is drastically deteriorating, there is order and rest in Hungary, the number of crimes committed has decreased, and the efficiency of crime detection has improved. “In Europe which is afflicted by migration and the threat of terrorism, Hungary is one of the safest countries”, he stated.
Mr Kontrát stressed: the police may expect HUF 22 billion in excess funding in 2018, and from 1 January the pay of law enforcement workers will increase by another five per cent. As a result, thanks to the law enforcement career model, between July 2015 and January 2019 law enforcement workers will receive a fifty per cent pay rise on average. The replacement of police vehicles will continue in 2018, and they would like to replace the entire fleet of vehicles in the coming years.
The Immigration and Asylum Office will be given extra funding worth HUF 427 million, the Counter-terrorism Information and Criminal Analysis Centre will receive HUF 339 million more, while the National Directorate General for Disaster Management will be given HUF 3.8 billion more funding in 2018. At the same time, the funding of the national security services will also increase, Mr Kontrát said.
Tamás Vargha, Parliamentary State Secretary of the Defence Ministry stated at the press conference that Hungary’s security is the utmost priority. As he said, next year “more money, more soldiers and more equipment will be available in the service of the Hungarian defence effort”, and members of the Hungarian military will continue to take part in the protection of the borders also in 2018. He said that compared with this year, the country’s defence budget will increase by HUF 74 billion to HUF 428 billion. He added: the government is seeking to achieve that defence expenditures reach two per cent of GDP by 2024.
The State Secretary stressed: from January soldiers’ pay will increase by another five per cent thanks to the relevant career model, and in consequence their pay too will increase by 50 per cent on average between 2015 and 2019. Additionally, an extensive barracks development project will start in Hódmezővásárhely, Tata and Szolnok for the purposes of which the government is allocating HUF 11 billion in 2018.
Mr Vargha highlighted that
the individual outfits and equipment of soldiers will also be improved, and every member of the Hungarian defence forces will receive the latest combat uniform.
Another goal is to have a volunteer reserve unit in all 197 districts. To this end, the government will allocate more money to the renewal of the Volunteer Reserve System and the funding of the Defence Sports Association. The State Secretary added that, after a hiatus of twenty years, the training of military pilots and air traffic controllers will resume at the National Public Service University and the Szolnok air base.
Mr Vargha said that the goal of the Zrínyi 2026 defence and military forces development programme is for the Hungarian Defence Forces to become a major army in Central Europe, and to this end almost one hundred billion forints will be allocated to the development of the defence forces in 2018.
