Orbán to Reuters: New EU Migra­tion Pact Could Force Hun­gary to Wel­come Migrants

Hun­gary does not sup­port the new migra­tion and refugee pack­age pre­sent­ed by the Euro­pean Com­mis­sion on Wednes­day, Vik­tor Orbán told Reuters newswire on Fri­day. The Prime Min­is­ter also dis­cussed eco­nom­ic response to the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic, US elec­tions, Rus­sia, Brex­it and forint weakening.

Under the pack­age, Hungary’s com­mit­ment to send peo­ple back from the south­ern EU states like Italy or Greece, where they first arrived, could turn into an oblig­a­tion to accom­mo­date them in Hun­gary, he said.

Budapest will not agree to any­thing that could lead to Hun­gary being under oblig­a­tion to take in peo­ple com­ing from the Mid­dle East or Africa, Orbán said.

“That is a very prob­lem­at­ic point… It’s noth­ing else but just renamed relo­ca­tion. And we always reject relocation.

This point is not accept­able for the Hun­gar­i­an peo­ple,” he said, adding that asy­lum appli­ca­tions should be man­aged in “hotspots” out­side of EU borders.

Orbán said the dev­il was in the details of the pro­pos­al. He called it good news that “some taboos have dis­ap­peared”, and wel­comed that the big­ger empha­sis was on return­ing to their home­lands those not eli­gi­ble for asy­lum in the EU.

“In Hun­gary, we are very strict that we would not like to have a par­al­lel soci­ety, or open soci­ety or a mixed-up cul­ture,” Orbán said, argu­ing that

“We don’t think a mix­ture of Mus­lim and Chris­t­ian soci­ety could be a peace­ful one and could pro­vide secu­ri­ty and good life for the people.”

“Brex­it brave deci­sion but Hun­gary will stay”

The prime min­is­ter called Britain’s deci­sion to exit the Euro­pean Union a brave one but said that

Hun­gary “can’t afford to fol­low that track” because it was too close­ly inte­grat­ed in the EU.

Orbán said the EU only had itself to blame for the British ref­er­en­dum vote to leave the bloc because of the way it had treat­ed the coun­try. “We made mis­takes, ter­ri­ble mis­takes,” he said. “Brex­it is a brave deci­sion of the British peo­ple about their own lives…we con­sid­er it as evi­dence of the great­ness of the British,” he said.

Orbán said that there was a high lev­el of sup­port for the EU in Hun­gary despite the country’s many dis­putes with oth­er mem­ber states over issues such as migra­tion and the rule of law.

“Trump will win”

Orbán said he was con­vinced that Don­ald Trump would win the US pres­i­den­tial elec­tion set for Novem­ber 3.

“We have an excep­tion­al­ly good rela­tion­ship with Trump,”

Orbán said in his inter­view. Answer­ing a ques­tion, he added that “prob­a­bly the lev­el of open­ness and kind­ness and help­ing each oth­er will be low­er should Joe Biden win”.

“He (Trump) will win,” Orbán said. Once that hap­pens, the Euro­pean Union “will need to nor­malise its trade rela­tion­ship with the Unit­ed States and also estab­lish clar­i­ty about the long-term pres­ence of US troops on Euro­pean soil”, he said.

The prime min­is­ter said Trump’s reelec­tion would be good news for those that view the EU as a com­mu­ni­ty of mem­ber states rather than as a bloc “built around its institutions”.

“Sanc­tions against Rus­sia should be lifted”

On anoth­er sub­ject, Orbán said that the EU should lift its sanc­tions against Rus­sia. The Hun­gar­i­an gov­ern­ment sees no point in impos­ing fur­ther restric­tions in con­nec­tion with the poi­son­ing of oppo­si­tion politi­cian Alex­ei Naval­ny, either, Orbán said, but added that if the com­mu­ni­ty should ini­ti­ate such sanc­tions “we are ready to consider”.

“We should be very, very tough on the mil­i­tary side in rela­tion to Rus­sia and we should be very coop­er­a­tive on the trade side. We are very weak on mil­i­tary and we are very tough on trade,”

he said, adding that Europe should have a pow­er­ful army.

” Tax reduc­tion and investment”

Orbán said the Hun­gar­i­an gov­ern­ment would pro­mote devel­op­ment projects and reduce tax­es to boost the nation­al econ­o­my fol­low­ing the coro­n­avirus epidemic.

“We con­cen­trate on invest­ments because if we have invest­ments, we have jobs,”

he said. Answer­ing a ques­tion on the exchange rate of the forint, Orbán said that such issues were with­in the scope of author­i­ty of the Nation­al Bank of Hun­gary. “If you look at the fig­ures of the Hun­gar­i­an econ­o­my of the last sev­er­al years, they are splen­did, and it’s part­ly due to the nation­al bank. Facts cre­ate trust,” he said.

fea­tured image via Orbán’s Face­book page

Source: hun​gary​to​day​.hu