Prime minister of Hungary Viktor Orbán blasted the European Parliament for adopting changes to the bloc’s asylum system which the Hungarian government sees as the implementation of the ‘Soros Plan’ to flood the continent with an unlimited number of third-world migrants.
On Friday, the European Parliament’s Committee on Civil Liberties, Justice, and Home Affairs (LIBE) adopted a report on the amendment of the Dublin Agreement, which regulates the EU’s Common Asylum System, which would see all member states forced to accept asylum seekers against the will of their people and for funds to be withheld from nations that refuse to comply.
“The musket is not only primed but loaded: in Europe in the future a permanent and mandatory migrant relocation quota mechanism will be established, with no upper limit on numbers: the mandatory relocation quota,” Mr. Orbán told press.
“It is true that we are waist-deep in the struggle to protect this slice of our national sovereignty, but so far we have succeeded, because until now we have been the ones who decide who can live on Hungarian territory,” Mr. Orbán said, “but the attack on our sovereignty that the European Parliament has now launched is fiercer than any previous one.”
The raft of proposals would see:
- Scrapping the rule that the first country of safe arrival is responsible for asylum seekers who reach its borders;
- Asylum seekers’ preference would be taken into consideration with migrants being able to choose between four countries which, at that time, had received the fewest number of asylum seekers;
- Faster family reunification;
- Applicants will have the “option to register as a group” of up to 30 on arrival in Europe;
- “All member states must participate and share responsibility for asylum seekers”; and
- “Member states refusing to accept relocation of applicants… would face limits on their access to EU funds”.
Members of European Parliament (MEPs) from centre-right EPP, socialist S&D, liberal Alde, Greens/EFA, and the far-left GUE/NGL voted 43-16 in favour.
The Council of the European Union has yet to approve the amendments, and the plenary will be asked to formally confirm the decision by LIBE to enter into negotiations during its November session in Strasbourg.
Parliament’s lead MEP on the revision, Cecilia Wikström (ALDE, Sweden) said the new asylum system would be “based on solidarity, with clear rules and incentives to follow them, both for the asylum seekers and for all member states”.
Hungarian government spokesman Zoltán Kovács told Kossuth Radio that the Hungarian government intends to oppose the draft reforms, saying it amounts to the “institutionalisation of migration and the opening up of the European Union’s external borders”.
“The LIBE is doing — as it did with its decision on Thursday — nothing other than what we call the Soros plan,” Kovács said, referring to U.S. open borders activist and financier George Soros. He also claimed that “Soros’s people” are present in the LIBE.
Robustly defending his country, Orbán said: “While this government is in power and I am at its head, there will be no kind of relocation or quota in Hungary.”
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