The war of words on migration is escalating between the EU and the conservative Hungarian government, as Budapest made it clear once again that it will send illegal migrants to Brussels if the EU keeps forcing Hungary to let them in.
If Brussels “wants us to let them in, we will let them in—put them on the bus, and drop them off in front of [European Commission President] Ursula von der Leyen’s office,” Tamás Menczer, the spokesman for the conservative Hungarian ruling party Fidesz said in a video posted on his Facebook account on Monday, September 9th.
On Friday, Bence Rétvári, the Interior Ministry’s State Secretary, held a press conference in front of a row of passenger buses with illuminated signs reading “Röszke-Brussels,” signalling a one-way route that would take migrants from the southern border of Hungary to the capital of the EU.
Rétvári said if the European Union forces Hungary to admit illegal migrants, Hungary will offer free transport to Brussels.
The strong words by the Hungarian officials come after a verdict by the European Court of Justice in June, which ordered Hungary to pay a fine of €200 million for persistently breaking the bloc’s asylum rules, plus an additional €1 million for every day it fails to comply—in effect punishing Hungary for protecting its own and the EU’s borders.
Since 2015, Hungary has made it difficult for illegal migrants to enter the country, which is also the external border of the European Union. Hungary has been enabling its police to deport foreigners lacking valid documentation directly to Serbia. Illegal migrants travelling through the Western Balkan route can only submit requests for asylum outside Hungary’s borders.
The European Commission, which has been pursuing an open-border, pro-migration policy, has deemed these practices a breach of EU law, saying asylum seekers should be allowed into a member state to seek protection and to stay there until their claim is handled.
The European Commission recently said that Hungary has until September 17th to pay up or else the money will be automatically subtracted from the country’s allocated share of the EU budget.
The decision to punish Hungary for not welcoming migrants was a “political, not a legal decision,” spokesman Tamás Menczer told reporters. He said that legally speaking Hungary is obliged to protect the EU’s external borders, but it has politically been berated for doing so.
The proposal by the government to bus migrants to Brussels was first mentioned by Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s chief of staff Gergely Gulyás who said that if the EU continues to impose a form of regulation on Hungary that “does not make it possible to detain migrants at the border,” his country will offer every migrant “transport to Brussels free of charge.”
“The buses are ready! If Brussels wants more migrants, they can have them. But we want to protect our borders and ensure the security of Hungary,” Rétvári wrote in a Facebook post on Friday. He added that there are no legal obstacles for Hungary to bus migrants to Brussels.
The government has said it will file legal proceedings against the EU over the fines and is also taking legal steps to ensure that Brussels pays up the €2 billion it owes to Budapest for defending the EU’s external borders.
The socialist mayor of Brussels, Philippe Close—who made a name for himself by trying, but failing to ban the National Conservatism conference held in the Belgian capital in April—lashed out at the “provocations” of the Hungarian government, and called on the Belgian government to block the buses at the Belgian border.
Nicole de Moor, Belgium’s migration minister on Monday also criticised Hungary, saying Hungary’s threat “undermines solidarity and cooperation” within the EU. He claimed that if Hungary goes ahead with sending migrants to Brussels, it “would be a flagrant violation of European and international agreements” and “Belgium will therefore not provide access” to any such migrant arrivals.
