Hungary’s anti-immigration government is set to provide free one-way tickets to Brussels to migrants and asylum seekers trying to enter the EU. | Photo credit: AFP
Hungary’s anti-immigration government is set to provide free one-way tickets to Brussels for migrants and asylum seekers attempting to enter the European Union, a minister said on Thursday (August 22, 2024), after the country was recently fined heavily over its restrictive asylum policies.
Speaking at a press conference in Budapest, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s chief of staff, Gergely Gulyas, criticized the European Court of Justice’s June ruling that ordered Hungary to pay a fine of $216 million for repeatedly violating EU asylum rules, and an additional 1 million euros a day until it brings its policies into line with EU law.
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“Brussels wants to force us to admit migrants at any cost,” Gulyas said, referring to the EU’s headquarters in Belgium.
He said that if the EU continues to impose rules on Hungary that “do not make it possible to stop migrants at the border,” his country would offer every migrant “free transport to Brussels.”
Hungary’s anti-immigrant government has taken a tough stance on who enters the country, with more than 1 million people crossing into Europe in 2015, most of them fleeing the conflict in Syria. The country built fences secured with razor wire along its southern borders with Serbia and Croatia and created two transit zones to hold refugees on its border with Serbia. Those transit zones have since closed.
But the EU has questioned Hungary’s unusually strict asylum system, and asked the EU’s top court to fine Budapest for forcing people seeking international protection to go to its embassies in Serbia or Ukraine to apply for travel permits, in violation of EU rules that require all member countries to have the same asylum procedures.
Mr Orban, a right-wing populist who has frequently clashed with the EU, had previously pledged that Hungary would not change its migration and asylum policies despite any ruling by the European Court of Justice.
On Thursday (August 22, 2024), Gulyas criticized the fines imposed due to the asylum system in Hungary, saying: “Hungary does not want to pay this daily fine indefinitely, so we will make entry possible for people if they wish, and provide them with a one-way ticket to Brussels.”
He added: “If Brussels wants migrants, it can take them.”
Hungary’s threat to take migrants to Brussels mirrors similar moves by Republican governors in the United States, who since 2022 have sent undocumented migrants by bus or plane to Democratic strongholds such as New York, Los Angeles and Chicago in protest at federal asylum procedures.