Plans to settle migrants in Socialist-run cities?

Budapest, September 12 (MTI) – The opposition Socialist Party said Monday that they have no plans to settle migrants in cities where they run the municipal government.

Prime Minister Viktor Orbán told lawmakers in parliament earlier that Brussels was preparing a “ruse” to redistribute migrants in “left-wing” European cities. “If they [Brussels] can’t get along with nation states then they will get along with left-wing cities … Now it will become apparent where the migrant settlements will be,” Orbán said.

Bertalan Tóth, the Socialist Party’s parliamentary group leader, called Orbán’s remarks a “dirty lie” and “yet another form of inciting hatred”.

He said it was also not true that Brussels was planning to implement an automatic mechanism for redistributing migrants without an upper limit, as Orbán had said. The EU never made any decisions about automatic migrant quotas, Tóth said, arguing that although the European Commission had put forward proposals on the concept, it was rejected by several national parliaments, including the Hungarian one. He noted that the initiative was rejected with 95 percent of the Hungarian parliament — including the Socialist group — voting against it.