Orbán: Europe ‘would have fallen’ without Hungary’s border measures

Budapest, September 29 (MTI) – Had Hungary not fulfilled its obligations concerning illegal migration, Europe “would have fallen” by now, the prime minister said in an interview to free-distribution daily Lokál on Thursday.

Viktor Orbán told the paper that by implementing strict border protection measures last year Hungary did not “reinvent the wheel” but simply “did what is done in more sober parts of the world from the US to Israel: we protected Hungary and with it the European Union’s borders.”

Concerning the Oct. 2 referendum on EU mandatory migrant quotas, the prime minister said Hungary and Europe’s future would be at stake on Sunday. He said the European Commission had not withdrawn its plan to impose migrant quotas on member states but in fact it reiterated it last week.

He said Hungary was still committed to a shared European future, but added, however, that the EU needed to make policy changes so that “we can preserve the Europe that we all love and consider home and for which we have already sacrificed so much.”