Europe getting closer to sensible migration policy, Orbán says at V4 summit

Warsaw, March 28 (MTI) – “We are getting closer to a sensible migration policy in Europe”, Prime Minister Viktor Orbán said after a Visegrad Four summit meeting in Warsaw on Tuesday, which focussed on a variety of issues, including last week’s EU summit in Rome, Brexit and migration.

Hungary has closed all legal loopholes concerning migration and prepared itself for the possible failure of the migration deal between the EU and Turkey, Orbán told a press conference.

“We are able to halt any wave of migration, no matter its size,” he said.

Hungary has also made the first steps to eliminate the “migrant business”, Orbán said.

“A good few NGOs obviously consider the migrant issue a business matter. For this reason, we will take steps to make their operation fully transparent,” he said.

Orbán said views that link the issue of migration with the imbursement of EU monies are illegitimate.

“Let’s not allow them to intimidate us,” he added.

Asked about Hungary’s recently-amended asylum rules that entered into effect on Tuesday, Orbán said the new laws served to protect EU citizens. He said Austrians and Germans could “sleep sound” because Hungary fulfils its Schengen obligations.

He said Europe would have to get used to such laws generating disputes within the bloc, adding that they had also generated “absurd rulings” by the European Court of Human Rights, referring to a recent ruling by the Strasbourg court ordering Hungary to compensate two Bangladeshi asylum-seekers for wrongly detaining and deporting them. Orbán said such legal proceedings were connected to the “migrant business” of certain NGOs, which he said would have to be investigated.