Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán has offered to provide a “corridor” through his country to allow migrants to travel to Western Europe if EU leaders want mass migration, telling them: “If you need them, take them.”
The Hungarian prime minister made the offer while speaking to public broadcaster Kossuth Radio on Friday, saying that he was open to allowing for a “corridor” in Hungary so migrants can get to Western Europe.
“Our argument with Brussels is not because they don’t see the numbers that we see,” Prime Minister Orbán said, according to Hungary Today. “It’s because they think it’s all good. So they think migration is a good thing. The head of the Brussels bureaucracy has said that it is good if more migrants come, that migration is good, that our societies need migration.
“So they think that what we are fighting against at our southern borders is not a bad thing, it is a good thing, and they see us as wrong because they think that we are preventing a good thing. To which we say, you know what, if it’s good for you, take them. Hungary is ready to open a corridor for migrants to march up to Austria, Germany and Sweden.”
“If you need them, take them, but Hungary refuses to allow Brussels to force its opinion on Hungary,” Mr Orbán said.
Mr Orbán also noted Hungary had been one of the first countries to build a border wall since the height of the migrant crisis in 2015, and that now, many countries, including Greece, Spain, and Poland, had embraced building border walls to stem the flow of illegal immigrants.
So far this year, there have been 92,000 attempts at crossing into Hungary, according to the Hungarian leader, who said the increase is four times that of last year.
On Tuesday, Prime Minister Orbán sent a letter to European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, requesting the European Union help fund border protection costs.
“A new migration crisis is unfolding at the doorstep of the European Union,” Orbán said and added: “As you are well aware, the hybrid uses of migration stemming from Belarus, as well as the disastrous evacuation of the security forces from Afghanistan may potentially bring forth an even more severe crisis than what we have witnessed in 2015.”
According to Orbán, Hungary has spent €1.64 billion (£1.4bn/$1.89bn) on border protection, saying the fence had “demonstrated over the past years that it can safeguard the safety of EU citizens and the European Union as a whole”.
Orbán is not the only EU leader to be concerned over the potential of a new migrant crisis following the fall of Afghanistan to Taliban forces in August.
Greek Migration Minister Notis Mitarakis spoke in August in the aftermath of the Taliban takeover, saying: “We are clearly saying that we will not and cannot be the gateway of Europe for the refugees and migrants who could try to come to the European Union.”
“We cannot have millions of people leaving Afghanistan and coming to the European Union… and certainly not through Greece,” he added.
Since then, Greece has increased the number of personnel manning the land border with Turkey over ongoing concerns linked to the crisis in Afghanistan.