Orbán and Fico hold talks in Slovakia

Bratislava, October 7 (MTI) – Mandatory migrant quotas need to be taken off the European Union’s agenda for good, Prime Minister Viktor Orbán said after talks with his Slovak counterpart in Bratislava (in Hungarian: Pozsony) on Friday.

The Hungarian constitution has to be amended to declare that nobody can force any kind of mandatory resettlement quotas onto Hungarians, Orbán told reporters after his talks with Robert Fico.

The prime minister said he had reassured Fico that Hungary’s constitutional amendment would be in line with the EU’s legal system.

A mandatory resettlement quota system without an upper limit could ruin “everything we have achieved and could destroy everything we have worked for,” Orbán said.

Regarding Hungary’s migrant quota referendum, Orbán said that since the country’s democratic transition of 1989-90, never have so many voters agreed on their preference as last Sunday. Although Hungary’s constitutional system prescribes strict rules regarding the validity threshold of a referendum, the fact that 3.3 million people had cast their votes for the same answer cannot go ignored, Orbán insisted.

The referendum was ruled invalid by Hungary’s election office as turnout did not reach the required 50-percent-plus-one-vote threshold.

Given that the referendum will not automatically have any legal ramifications, the Hungarian parliament will have to make sure that the result is reflected in legislation, Orbán said.

The prime minister also said that at the beginning of the year, European prime ministers had decided that the bloc should return to observing the Schengen system by November and that the EU’s external borders should be defended. Orbán said he had asked Fico to enforce this decision as the prime minister of the country that holds the EU’s rotating presidency.