Tens of thousands of people tried to enter Hungary illegally in 2023

Nearly 49,000 border violators and 387 human smugglers have been stopped in Hungary this year, the prime minister’s chief domestic security advisor said on Sunday. György Bakondi told public radio that migrants and human smugglers had kept Hungary’s borders under significant pressure.

Some 12 percent of prisoners in Hungary are spending their sentence as a result of human smuggling, totalling 2,048 people from 73 countries. “They are the people on the edges, the real big criminals who are the movers of the networks don’t come even close to the border, and they cannot get caught,” he added. Action against human smuggling poses great burdens on the Hungarian state, he said.

Hungary cooperates with all countries that help control national borders, which also serves domestic security, Bakondi said. Hungary also tries to cooperate with Frontex, the European Union’s border control agency. Cooperation is under way with Austria and Serbia, and between Croatia, Slovenia and Austria, too, he added. Bakondi said these were correct initiatives but added that “there does not seem to be any change in the European Union’s position, neither from the point of financing, nor in legal support”.

He said that despite recent political statements, such as remarks by the German chancellor, the president of the European Commission and the group leader of the European People’s Party calling for protecting the EU’s external borders, possibly by building fences, “we are not getting any money or actual decisions concerning this”. “The only thing I can think of is that such remarks are made only because of the approaching European parliamentary elections where migration will be a big issue, but they are not actually solving the situation,” he added.

Bakondi also said that ideologies promoted by foundations linked to US financier George Soros still make an influence on the handling of migration. An EU audit committee recently visiting Hungary said that “if we do not accept the political and ideological position they represent, then they do not give support to us”, Bakondi added. Since the migration crisis of 2015, Germany has increasingly experienced problems, such as the overburdening of the social support system and terrorist attacks claiming hundreds of lives, Bakondi said. “Delirious ideas that we need the migrant workforce and that they quickly integrate in society have proven untrue, and migrants are increasingly open about stating that their ideology, the Muslim religion, is stronger than Europeans’ religion,” Bakondi said. The greater proportion of migrants are present in society, the more severe the situation gets, with migrants already representing more than 18 percent of society in Germany, he added.