“Freedom was at stake” before call to erect border fence, says interior minister

Budapest, September 30 (MTI) – Hungary needed to erect a fence on its border with Serbia because “freedom was at stake”, the interior minister told parliament’s defence and law enforcement committee on Wednesday.

Sandor Pinter said the European Union’s Schengen rules stipulate that the zone’s external borders have to be protected and that measures must be in place to prevent anyone from crossing the “green” border. Under the rules, periphery states are free to set the rules of entry into the EU’s territory, he added.

The minister told the committee that a total of 287,383 people have entered Hungary illegally so far this year, most of them entering from Serbia. He said illegal migrants are still being registered on the Serbian border, but not on the Croatian one, as the government “will assume” that the migrants coming from that EU member state were already registered. Pinter said the Croatian government had indicated that it was “fully prepared” to register the migrants.

Pinter said migrants who have been registered in Hungary could later be sent back, noting that western European countries want to send back more than 30,000 people, in accordance with the Dublin Agreement.

The minister said that most of the migrants who have submitted their asylum applications in Hungary are “not cooperative”, and leave the country once their asylum procedure begins. He added, however, that refugee reception centres cannot be kept locked.

Responding to a question by committee head Lajos Kosa, Pinter said that the Hungarian-Croatian border is only partially sealed, as only three border crossing points have been closed.