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Merkel, Orbán meet in Berlin – UPDATE
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Hungary is taking a big burden off Germany’s shoulders by preventing anyone who enters Hungary from sidestepping the law, Prime Minister Viktor Orbán told a press conference held jointly with German Chancellor Angela Merkel after talks in Berlin on Thursday.
Orbán: Hungary helps Germany by stopping illegal migration
Orbán said Hungary had built a fence along its southern border to “regain control over its own territory”.
He said a legal dispute was emerging around claims that the first point of entry for migrants to the EU was not Hungary but Greece, adding Hungary’s standpoint is that Germany should send migrants back to Greece. “We’re ready for that long-term dispute,” he said.
He said Hungary felt wronged to be accused of lacking a sense of solidarity when it went to great lengths to protect the EU’s southern border. Fully 8,000 armed people protect the southern border 24 hours a day.
Migrants would immediately make their way to Germany otherwise,
he added. Every day, 4,000-5,000 migrants would arrive in Germany were there no effective border controls, Orbán said, adding that this amounted to Hungarian solidarity.
“Our borders will remain protected in the future, too.”
Orbán said Hungary “sees the world differently” from Germany but strives for tight cooperation with it. Differences in opinion cannot prevent the two countries from finding new opportunities for cooperation, he added.
“This is a difference in approach”, he said, adding, however, that this difference would not hinder cooperation.
As regards bilateral economic relations, Orbán said Hungary was building a labour-based economy with a view to reaching full employment. Hungary’s cooperation with Germany is especially helpful towards achieving this goal, he added.
Bilateral investment and trade figures are “fantastic”, he said, adding that he and Merkel had discussed how to keep up this level of cooperation. Hungary and Germany will set up a working group with a view to intensifying bilateral cooperation in the area of innovation and technology, he said.
Trade turnover between the Visegrad Group (V4) countries and Germany is 50 percent more than Germany’s trade volume with France,
Orbán said. “There’s a new reality unfolding before our eyes,” he said, arguing that the future of Europe’s economic growth lay in German-V4 cooperation.
With regard to the Berlin meeting and news conference between Prime Minister Viktor Orban and German Chancellor Angela Merkel
it is not hard to see that the reality of real world politics rests clearly and firmly in the hands of one, but wise ,Viktor Orban !!
While dancing around the centrally flawed, but ever thorny issue of migration – instituted by one Angela Merkel in 2015, which has thrown Europe into absolute chaos by attempting to force other nation states to swallow its, Germany’s, unpopular defective policy !
When clearly help should be directed essentially to its source; and now any further ‘ham fisted’ attempt to justify the above says to this writer its time for Chancellor Angela Merkel to go !
John H.Morton.