Therefore at a European level the Hungarian government can only consent to new migrant regulations which guarantee the defence of the external borders, the Prime Minister said in his statement, adding that it is in this spirit that Hungary has submitted proposals for new immigration regulations to replace those which are at the moment “more focused on the distribution of migrants”.
Mr. Orbán stated that “We should not focus on the distribution of migrants, and a mandatory migrant quota is out of the question, but we should instead focus on ensuring that illegal migrants cannot gain entry to Hungary and the territory of the European Union”. The Prime Minister said that this standpoint is gaining an increasing number of advocates.
With reference to the fact that Mr. Weber is a leading member of the Bavarian Christian Social Union (CSU), the Prime Minister noted that in Germany a new government has recently been formed, and “for us it is important that we have first-rate relations with the Germans, and therefore also with the Bavarians”.
Mr. Orbán, who described Hungarian-Bavarian relations as open and friendly, said that “We have never made a secret of the fact that we see Bavaria as our role model, and we would like to live in a country which is as strong and rich as it is. At the moment this seems to be a distant prospect, but we have never abandoned this goal”.
He conveyed words of praise to Mr. Weber for the work of President of the CSU Horst Seehofer, who recently stepped down as Minister-President of Bavaria to take up the post of Interior Minister in the German Federal Government. “This awakens hope in us, as in the minds of Hungarians the Bavarians have always […] been seen as a fair people”, he said, adding that he expects that as a member of the German government Mr. Seehofer will always accord Hungary the respect and recognition that it deserves. He went on to say that “we already see signs of this, and so Bavarian-Hungarian relations will now greatly add to the improvement of German-Hungarian relations in general”.
Another of the subjects covered in the talks on Tuesday was the 2019 election to the European Parliament, in relation to which Mr. Orbán said that in the election Fidesz will stand together with the team of the European People’s Party. “We belong to the European People’s Party, we are proud of this, and we see ourselves as a strong party within it”, he stated. He noted that Fidesz is not part of the party family’s mainstream, but rather to the right of the mainstream, meaning that “we are the CSU of the European People’s Party, as within it we are an important party in the group which represents traditional Christian democratic values”. He said that the People’s Party is a “big tent”, and “our type of traditional Christian democratic party has a place within it”.
Mr. Orbán said that “we want to win the 2019 European Parliament elections, and we also want to take responsibility for the formation of Europe’s future”.
