Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán has said that “Europe is full” and that following the gains of pro-sovereignty parties in recent elections, the EU can no longer “bury its head in the sand” over peoples’ rejection of mass migration.
The conservative Prime Minister told Kossuth Radio’s Sunday News listeners that he fundamentally rejected the migration proposals put forward at the EU Council summit last week “because the proposal presented by them focuses on and aims at the admission and distribution of immigrants”.
“Europe is full,” Prime Minister Orbán said.
“Its external borders must be defended, and migrants must not be brought in – they must be kept outside Europe.
“And if we defend the borders and there is no infiltration, then there will be nobody to distribute, and we can put this dispute behind us,” the ruling Fidesz party leader added.
Mr. Orbán also said he anticipated that following the passing of any pro-migrant legislation by the bloc would facilitate a rise in taxes by Brussels, with a significant portion being diverted to migrants.
He criticised not just the impacts on culture or national security that the institutionalisation of mass migration would have on the continent but the fiscal devastation it would have on countries – particularly those, such as Hungary, that have emerged from post-Communist political-economic structures in recent decades.
Western, more economically developed, European nations have already paid out billions for social programmes for the new arrivals.
Sweden, which took in the highest number of migrants per capita during the migrant crisis, may be forced to raise taxes and even the retirement age to pay for asylum seeker programmes. Germany’s entire budget surplus in 2016 went to migrant costs, with the federal government paying out €21.7 billion on migrants that year in total.
“Hungary would have to admit ten thousand migrants immediately,” the Hungarian premier told Kossuth Radio’s listeners. “According to the plan, the financial provision for each migrant would be 9 million forints. Hungary would be unable to withstand this: it would completely crush us.”
“It is unacceptable for tens of thousands of migrants to overwhelm a country… and destroy the economic results that it has finally achieved with such great effort.”
The Hungarian also called the “danger of terrorism” and crime associated with mass migration from the third world a threat to women, saying “women are endangered by it” and slammed the “censorship of news about migration, about terrorism, and about violence against women” in Western Europe.
“[The issue of migration] cannot be sidestepped: it is happening in spite of censorship – because there is indeed censorship.”
Noting how countries in the Union had made migration a major campaign issue in the past year, Orbán said that “pro migrant parties have clearly failed”.
“Despite the fact that the Western European elites want to marginalise and freeze out this question, it will forge its own path; because the nature of democracy is that sooner or later one must deal with those things which are most important to the people.
“And the most important thing for them is migration,” the Hungarian Prime Minister said, “and their economies are shaken by it. People want to talk about this.
“As a result of the Italian election, for the first time in Brussels, I feel that they’ve realised that they can no longer bury their heads in the sand.”