In a joint press statement with the leaders of the V4 countries (the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia), the Prime Minister explained: “Following his visit to the Baltic one or two days ago, the Polish Prime Minister has come to Budapest to inform the V4 about the situation that has developed along the Polish border”.
“The EU is under pressure from three directions. The flow of people northwards is continuous from the sub-Saharan region to the south, NGO ships are continuously transporting migrants to Europe’s shores via the sea, and the Western Balkan migration route is full once again”, he pointed out.
“We must express our thanks to Czech Prime Minister Andrej Babis and to our Czech friends for having sent border guards to the Hungarian border, and for the fact that those Czech border guards have stopped over four thousand illegal border crossers at Hungary’s southern border”, he noted.
“People leaving Afghanistan will also be arriving along the Balkan migration route, on which 100 thousand illegal migrants have been stopped at the Hungarian border so far this year”, Mr. Orbán told reporters. “30-35 thousand people-a-day are leaving Afghanistan, and the European Union must calculate with a significant increase in pressure along the Balkan migration route”, he stated.
“And now we have a third direction, the new attack that has been inflicted on the Poles; our Polish friends are under attack because of migration from an eastern direction”, he continued.
“Brussels is practicing mistaken politics; it is financing practically everything that increases migration pressure”, he highlighted. “It is funding NGOs and launching integration programs”, he added. “There is just one thing that Brussels refuses to give money for: the physical protection of the border”, he pointed out.
“The Hungarian position continues to be that the European Union must pay for the costs of border protection. It cannot be the case that the financial burdens of border protection are borne exclusively by countries that have been destined to be at the external border of the European Union by geography and history”, he declared.
The Prime Minister said Hungary has always offered the EU a fair agreement: “What would be fair would be for us to at least halve the costs; we will bear half the costs, but the other half should be given to us from Brussels in view of the fact that we are not only protecting ourselves, but also the whole of Europe”.
“We are recommending to the European Union that it should not provide funding to any country that has a direct or indirect hand in the migration pressure being exerted on the external border of the EU, and therefore on the Polish border”, he emphasised.
“At the meeting, we assured Poland of our full solidarity and support”, the Prime Minster said in closing.
