Budapest, February 13 (MTI) – Whoever crosses the border illegally, whatever reason they may give, must be taken into custody immediately, the prime minister said in an interview to public radio on Friday.
Viktor Orban said that the Austrians and Germans were in the process of changing their immigration regulations, and so migrants who cannot go any further than Hungary “are going to get stuck here”.
“If there isn’t a law which allows them to be taken immediately and deported back immediately then Hungary will become an asylum camp,” the prime minister said, adding that this must be avoided.
If it is made clear in the Balkans that it is not worth coming to Hungary then they will not come, he added.
Orban said that it was now necessary for Hungarian public opinion to be unquestionably unified and clear on the issue. He said he was asking the Hungarian public for authorisation to allow the authorities — at variance with European asylum policy — to take illegal border-crossers into custody, detain them and, where possible, to deport them immediately. If the government receives this authorisation as part of a national consultation then enforcement would be secured in Brussels, too, he said.
He noted that such rules had been in place in Hungary earlier but the EU stopped the Hungarian authorities from practising them. Now, however, it must be made clear to Brussels that “this was a bad decision on their part,” he said.
Photo: MTI