Government, opposition clash over stance on EU migrant quotas

Budapest, February 21 (MTI) – The government and opposition parties disagreed over their assessment of Hungary’s position taken at the recent EU summit in Brussels which addressed migration and other issues.

The government spokesman Zoltán Kovács told MTI on Sunday that the opposition was “lying” when it insisted that Prime Minister Viktor Orbán had voted in support of the EU’s migrant quotas at the summit which ended late on Friday. Kovács said contrary to what DK leader Ferenc Gyurcsány and other opposition leaders have been saying, the mandatory quota system will only be addressed at the next EU summit and what they actually signed at Friday’s meeting was an earlier agreement.

Several opposition parties however demanded that the ruling Fidesz-Christian Democrat coalition should pay back into the budget the funds spent on their earlier billboard campaigns advertising their tough stance against the quotas.

Dániel Z Kárpát, the deputy leader of the Jobbik party, told MTI on Sunday that his party is against the idea that migrants should be distributed among EU member states based on a mandatory quota. He said that the government was playing a game of “double speak” when it firmly rejects quotas when in Hungary but being much more admissive on the issue when in the EU. Z Kárpát said the Hungarian government supported the formal Conclusions adopted at the summit which calls for sharing out migrants to countries with EU borders and the setup of new reception centres.