Hungary Acted in Time as Europe Faces Daily Threats of Terrorism

Not a day goes by in Europe without a terrorist act being committed, attempted or prevented by the secret services, Prime Minister Orban's chief domestic security advisor told public Kossuth Radio's Sunday news program. Gyorgy Bakondi believes that those in charge of paving the way for new ideas on migration are completely unperturbed by these circumstances.

Dublin, 2023. november 24. Rohamrendõrök rendbontók által felgyújtott jármûveknél Dublin belvárosában, ahol zavargások törtek ki egy késelés miatt 2023. november 23-án. Órákkal korábban egy férfi öt embert, köztük három gyermeket megsebesített, az egyiküket súlyosan. A rendõrség õrizetbe vette a feltételezett elkövetõt. MTI/AP/PA/Brian Lawless Fotó: Brian Lawless

– So far this year, 174,000 border crossers and over a thousand people smugglers have been apprehended, according to Prime Minister Orban's chief advisor on homeland security. Gyorgy Bakondi emphasized that this marks a significant increase compared to previous years, except for 2015 when 400,000 people crossed the border in a few short months. 

György Bakondi (Photo: MTI/Szilárd Koszticsák)

Responding to the unsustainable public security situation, Serbia's political leadership has decided to deploy special police forces in recent weeks, Mr Bakondi stated. Consequently, officers arrested many people smugglers and discovered large quantities of weapons, ammunition, drugs, and forged documents, he said.

This is particularly interesting because the newcomers usually carry no documents with them,

– Mr Bakondi added. As a result of effective action by the Serbian police, the number of daily border-crossing attempts has dropped, and even these attempts are foiled at the fence, he noted.

People smugglers are part of a vast network spanning from Afghanistan or Syria to Germany, Sweden, and even Britain," Mr. Bakondi explained. He pointed out that this network, driven by significant financial gains, illicitly smuggles masses of people into the territories of sovereign states, disregarding border control regulations and security requirements.

Within the last one and a half to one year, the nature of this process has evolved to involve the use of arms and weapons,

– he stressed. First, the weapons were used by people smuggling gangs during their internal clashes, and later even during attacks on local residents. Most recently, some of the attacks took place at or around the border region in a bid to intimidate Hungarian border guards. Later, the gangs actually opened fire on joint Hungarian-Serbian patrols, which is unprecedented and has never happened here in the last eight to ten years, Mr Bakondi added.

Mr Bakondi pointed out that in Europe today, not a day goes by without an act of terrorism or an attempted act of terrorism.

This is dangerous, because if the draft migration pact remained in its current form, then someone firing a machine gun at border patrol officers tonight could register as a political refugee tomorrow, and he should be allowed entry and held in some migrant camp until his asylum application is processed.

– This solution has proven to be a spectacular failure in Western Europe, because those who should have been deported, around eighty percent, are still inside the country, he noted.

It's extremely difficult to believe that there are political forces viewing what's happened in Europe since 2015 - in terms of illegal migration - as a positive development, or thinking that this is the right solution for the European people, he said.

Regarding the fact that Hungary's southern border fence has faced repeated political attacks, whereas Finland has recently decided to shut down all its border crossing points before migrants coming from Russia, Mr Bakondi pointed out that in 2015, when the Hungarian government decided to build a technical border barrier system, they examined solutions already employed in Europe.

– They saw that on the border between Greece and Turkey, Bulgaria and Turkey, and along the border between Morocco and Spain, the English and the French have built a fence at the entrance to the tunnel. This was the only effective way to keep the masses away, to hold them back," Mr Bakondi explained.

Since then, many countries have followed suit, but Hungary is the only one that has come under permanent political attacks,

– he noted. 
Mr Bakondi expressed confidence that, faced with frequent terrorist attacks and the ensuing public security crisis with grave repercussions, EU citizens have reached the threshold of their political tolerance. This could trigger a turnaround at the upcoming EU elections, altering the composition of the European Parliament and immediately impacting the EU's migration policy, he said.

Cover photo: Illustration (Photo: MTI/AP/PA/Brian Lawless)