Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán slammed the European Union elite in Brussels saying that their concept of “solidarity” on migrant issues felt more like a “dictate”.
Prime Minister Orbán criticised EU officials’ calls for “solidarity” on the issue of migrant redistribution saying: “We don’t think it belongs to the question of solidarity to give up a nation’s constitutional rules and national sovereignty.”
“Brussels, on the other hand, thinks that whatever they declare solidarity, that’s solidarity,” he added, “This is a dictate.”
In an article on the official Hungarian government website, government spokesman Zoltán Kovács expanded on the prime minister’s comments writing: “The distorted narrative that is spun from Brussels attempts to convince European citizens that somehow European solidarity should be connected to accepting migrants, many of whom have crossed illegally into the territory of the EU.”
True solidarity, Kovacs argued, was “Hungary spending 270 billion forints (EUR 883.2 million) from its own budget on the protection of the external borders of the European Union with physical barriers and trained manpower.”
Dr. Kovacs said the Hungarians had asked for the EU to foot part of the bill for the border fence which has been incredibly effective at reducing the number of migrants entering the bloc.
He said that President of the European Commission Jean-Claude Juncker wrote a letter to Prime Minister Orbán lecturing the Hungarian leader on solidarity and refusing to help pay for the border defences unless Hungary agreed to take in migrants.
“More importantly,” Kovacs wrote, “there is no European legal basis for compulsory population resettlement on the continent, and there is a very good reason for that. The last time we saw that was during some of the darkest years of the former century.”
The European Court of Justice denied an appeal from the Hungarians and Slovaks last week which claimed the redistribution of migrants was not a legal measure the EU could make without the consent of all member states and their populations.
Last year, the Hungarians held a referendum on the subject of migrant redistribution which saw an overwhelming majority reject the idea and support the government’s stance.
Kovacs spoke to Breitbart London shortly after the result of the referendum in an exclusive interview in which he said the migrant policies of the EU had directly led to the increased in support of anti-mass migration parties like the Alternative for Germany (AfD) and the Freedom Party in Austria (FPÖ).
Many expect the FPÖ to enter government for the first time in over a decade after next month’s national election with its leader Heinz-Christian Strache promising to ban Islamism. Strache has received a surge of support on social media in recent weeks.
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