Orbán: Brussels migrant proposal ‘outrageous’
Budapest, May 6 (MTI) – The European Commission plan to fine member states that refuse to take in migrants 250,000 euros per migrant is “outrageous”, Prime Minister Viktor Orbán told public radio on Friday.
In his regular interview to Kossuth Radio, the PM said that each Hungarian has received around 4,000 euros in Brussels funding over the past seven years and 250,000 euros for an average Hungarian would amount to 39 years of earnings.
He said the proposal was a “kick in the stomach” and that it was hard to find civilized language with which to describe it.
Orbán accused the leaders of Brussels of sitting in an ivory tower. “They don’t recognise the reality and they have no idea what they’re talking about,” he added.
Referring to the commission’s “penalty” proposal, he said: “There has never been any stronger propaganda against the idea of the European Union.”
Commenting on the Brussels proposal regarding the automatic distribution of migrants between EU member states, Orbán said the “left wing pushing the measure” had always denied that the plan would be forced on member states, but now the commission itself had disclosed it.
“This is no game: they want to take away the right of Hungarians to say with whom we wish to live and with whom we don’t want to live …”
He called on Hungarians to line up against the Brussels plan, which he described as a “complete mistake”. The body is preoccupied with issues regarding refugees whereas “our problem does not concern the distribution of refugees but protecting the border.”
“This is no game: they want to take away the right of Hungarians to say with whom we wish to live and with whom we don’t want to live …”said the defence of the borders must be fortified and refugee centres must be built outside of the EU.
He said Hungarians have demonstrated the greatest solidarity in migrant affairs, only “I did not have the cheek to invoice Brussels for the registration costs if 175,000 migrants … the extra costs incurred by Hungarian police … and the costs of building a fence.”
“We acted in a European manner”, he added.
In central Europe, including in Hungary “we are in control of the situation … we do not go along and approve the disappearance of our cultural heritage overnight and there will be no parallel society developing here,” Orbán said.
He described the planned referendum on the mandatory migrant quotas as “clear, simple and comprehendible”. He added that he also had an “authorisation to say no” but his word was not worth as much as the word of “ten million Hungarians”.
“We are doing the whole referendum to stop Brussels”, he added.
Commenting on former NATO secretary-general Javier Solana’s remarks that were Hungary to apply for EU membership today it would be rejected, Orbán said “we know the former NATO secretary-general” and “he is an old communist”.
Photo: MTI
Source: http://mtva.hu/hu/hungary-matters