Fidesz: Hungary’s border fence ‘functioning well’

Budapest (MTI) – Hungary’s fence along its southern border has stood the test of time, and measures taken on July 5 to tighten border controls have proven effective, Lajos Kósa said on Monday.

“No one coming from Serbia to Hungary can enter the EU’s territory illegally,” the head of parliament’s defence and law enforcement committee told a press conference after a committee session in Roszke, near the Serbian border.

The transit zone set up on the border operates in an orderly way and has the appropriate capacity to process asylum requests, he said.

Illegal entrants stopped within eight kilometres of the border are escorted back over the border and offered an opportunity to apply for asylum at a transit zone, Kósa said.

A significant proportion of migrants are not escaping persecution but are bypassing a legal route into western Europe in the hope of gaining a better standard of living, Kósa said. He insisted that 95 percent of arrivals are non-cooperative and the vast majority hand false identity papers to the authorities. On the basis of data gathered at Hungarian transit zones, 70 percent of arrivals have already been registered by the authorities of another EU country, and they come to Hungary knowing that their asylum requests should be processed elsewhere.

Kósa said that investigations carried out do not support reports that Hungarian police and soldiers have used devices against migrants which are not permitted. The prosecutor is examining the reports, but what it is certain that the kind of devices police are accused of employing have not been provided to them.