“We shall not allow them to take away our right as Hungarians to have exclusive control over the question of who we want to live with here in Hungary and who we don’t want to live with”, the Prime Minister declared. According to Mr. Orbán, the problem now is not so much with the migrants, but rather with Brussels, which “wants to relocate to Hungary people with whom we do not want to live”.
“I love my homeland and I want it to remain just the way it is – with all its fallibilities, faults and virtues. […] All we are protecting is the right to not change. We Hungarians like Hungary the way it is”, the Prime Minister said. Mr. Orbán also spoke about the fact that while the left view the issue as part of an ideology, the Hungarian government sees it as something which is endangering our everyday lives. “The left is dealing with theoretical issues, while we deal in concrete facts”, he said, adding that he would also like the people of Hungary not to see their relationship with the migrants in ideological terms, but as an “everyday truth” that is related to security, the threat of terrorism, and to the country’s economic situation and cultural identity.
[1]
The way to help the migrants is “to take aid to where they live, instead of allowing the problems into Europe”, Mr. Orbán reiterated, adding that his government is spending a lot of money on assisting people in need where they live. We are solving nothing by letting them in, he said, because “if we want to help everyone by recognising their right to a better life and therefore let them in […] then as a result we will be ruining Europe – and within it Hungary”.
The Prime Minister pointed out that Hungary has prepared for a migration policy of defence. But in Brussels they “are using double standards”, because while on the one hand they are attacking Hungary for building a fence, they never reprimand Greece for not fulfilling its commitments under international law, and have not forced it to take action. According to Mr. Orbán, the problem in Europe would not have come into existence and would not be continuously regenerated if Greece protected its southern borders in accordance with the international agreements it has signed. However, it is unable or unwilling to do this, resulting in Hungary effectively becoming the European Union’s external Schengen border. This has meant that “we have become a line of defence against our will”, he said, and as a result Hungary is also protecting Europe.
He noted that the “braver politicians in Germany and Austria” are saying that what the Hungarians are doing is good for both Germany and Austria. In view of the above, the Prime Minister repeated previous comments: “If the Greeks are incapable of protecting their southern borders then we must build a European line of defence along Greece’s northern borders with Bulgaria and Macedonia”, warning that “If this does not happen, then the line of defence will slip even further west, and Hungary will once again become the front line”.
[2]
Speaking about other European leaders, he said that “my colleagues are not supporting this proposal, because they think that if there is trouble then the Hungarians will once again fulfil their obligations under the Schengen Agreement, and will protect not only themselves, but also Austria and Germany”. During the interview Mr. Orbán also reacted to German chancellor Angela Merkel’s statement that, if she could, she would turn back the clock.
The Prime Minister said that there are some political decisions which can be corrected, for instance a bad budget or a bad ministerial programme, but there are other mistakes which cannot be corrected. “It is at times like these that people in the West say that they would turn back the clock if they had the chance – which is a wonderful idea, except it is impossible”, he said. Mr. Orbán added that such mistakes must not be made: European laws enabling Brussels to relocate migrants in Hungary must not be allowed to see the light of day.
The Prime Minister also said that Western intelligence services and homeland security experts had informed political decision-makers in good time about the dangers and public safety risks involved in allowing migrants into Europe in an uncontrolled way. “The facts revealed by Hungarian experts also prove that those people who later committed serious acts of terrorism in Western Europe arrived together with the migrants, and also travelled through Hungary”, he said. “If at the very beginning the EU had taken a clear stand on closing the border, we could have saved the lives of many European citizens”, he declared.
According to Mr. Orbán, what we see today is not a migrant crisis, but part of a massive population movement, and “this is just the vanguard”; the truly intense pressure on Europe will occur “when the millions of people in Central Africa also start moving”.
Speaking about the concept of establishing a joint European military force, the Prime Minster said that both true refugees and economic immigrants must be stopped, accommodated and separated from each other before they can enter the territory of the European Union. We must also be capable of militarily protecting this territory outside the EU. “Without military strength we will be incapable of either establishing or protecting a large refugee city of this kind outside the EU”, he said.