Orban: Europe needs frontier along Greece’s northern border

Budapest, January 8 (MTI) – Europe should build a line of protection along the northern border or Greece, Prime Minister Viktor Orban said in an interview to public radio on Friday.

The prime minister told Kossuth Radio a decisive issue in 2016 would be whether Europeans realise that it is not enough simply to slow down the wave of migration but to stop it altogether.

Orban also said that Bulgaria should be part of the Schengen zone, and Macedonia should strengthened so as to guarantee a line of defence on the northern Greek border. He added that he did not trust the agreement with Turkey about migration would be sufficient in itself to tackle the issue.

Orban also said the EU’s basic treaty should be amended. He said “Brusselism” was a concealed method for drawing away power from the member states. Whenever a problem arises in the EU the initial reflex is that “a European solution is needed, so let’s draw away power” from member states. The risks of “Brusselism” are clear now to everyone in connection with migration and it cannot be corrected without amending the basic treaty, he added.

In response to a question about reports on sexual harassment against women in Germany on New Year’s Eve, he said “those who want to lecture us on the freedom of speech” and those who say the arrival of migrants is a good thing try to suppress, in the name of liberalism, all negative news about migrants. Recent events in Germany have revealed that press freedom in central Europe is greater and more diverse than in many western European states, he insisted.

Commenting on his private visit to Poland, where he met the head of the Polish ruling Law and Justice party Jaroslaw Kaczynski, he said the EU should not even think about imposing sanctions of any kind against Poland. This would require full consensus and Hungary will never support such a move, he added.

“The Poles deserve greater respect,” he said. Hungary has already gone through the same pains as and “we also demanded respect for Hungarians”. He said he agreed with Poles who say that nobody should speak to them in the way that Brussels is increasingly doing.

Orban added that Poland’s new Prime Minister Beata Szydlo will soon visit Hungary.

Commenting on the visit by British Prime Minister David Cameron to Budapest on Thursday, Orban said Hungary shares Britain’s view that the EU should be reformed.