We Will Not Relinquish Border Restrictions, Says State Secretary

The government's position is clear and unchanged: regardless of the decision adopted, Hungary will not give up its legal and physical border barriers.

PM's Cabinet Office Parliamentary State Secretary Csaba Domotor (Source: Facebook)

The government's position is clear and unchanged: regardless of the decision adopted, we will not give up our legal and physical border barriers to entry, Csaba Domotor stressed in a video uploaded on his Facebook page on Friday.

The parliamentary state secretary of the PM's Cabinet Office spoke of the European Parliament's new migration pact accepted earlier this week.

"This package contains everything we oppose," he stated, including a regulation on the distribution of migrants, which stipulates that if a member state refuses to accept them, it will have to pay a fine of 8 million forints  (20,000 euros) per migrant.

"In principle, there is an admission quota established for each member state, but the European Commission has already made it clear that the number is open-ended and can be topped up in case of emergency. As for what is deemed a migration emergency will be decided by them," explained the parliamentary state secretary, noting that the Commission also stipulates what percentage of the asylum applications have to be processed in each of the member states.

According to the politician, it is disproportionate, unfair and unacceptable that Hungary has to process 28 percent of all procedures. The migration pact would loosen the otherwise very strict Hungarian asylum regulations in place, thus creating migrant ghettos within the country.

Csaba Domotor also pointed out that, according to data put out by Frontex, 380,000 people tried to enter Europe illegally in 2023, which means that migration pressure was "as high as in the most critical periods of 2016. The numbers are currently increasing on the Spanish and Italian routes, as well as on the Greek islands, he said, stressing that "Brussels has not asked anyone whether they support this pact. If European citizens had been consulted, it would have turned out that we are not the only ones who are against the whole thing", he added.

Cover photo: PM Cabinet Office Parliamentary State Secretary Csaba Domotor (Source: Facebook)