Government: EC’s reported plans for migrant fees “hair-raising”

Budapest, May 4 (MTI) – A plan by the European Commission reported by the Financial Times to charge member states that refuse to receive migrants 250,000 euros per migrant is “hair-raising”, the government spokesman said on Wednesday.

Zoltán Kovács told public radio Kossuth that the fee amounted to “blackmail”.

In a separate interview to public news channel M1, Kovács said the government wants to prevent migrants from coming to Europe illegally. Unless they are genuinely in need of protection, they should not set foot in Europe, he added. According to Kovács, the government’s so-called Schengen 2.0 proposal serves this aim, and an increasing number of people support it.

The real line of division in Europe runs between those who obey the common border protection rules and those who don’t, he said.

The government wants a Europe where strong member states can make decisions on issues that affect them such as with whom they want to live in the future. This is why a referendum on the mandatory migrant quota is more timely than ever and its result would be impossible for the EU to neglect, he said.

Source: http://mtva.hu/hu/hungary-matters