The conservative government of Hungary is taking legal steps to ensure that Brussels pays up the €2 billion it owes to Budapest for defending the European Union’s external borders.
Hungary erected a fence in 2015, at the beginning of the European migration crisis, to prevent illegal migrants from entering the EU.
The country was initially berated by Western states calling Hungary’s actions “inhumane,” and saying that it targeted people who wanted to seek refuge in Europe. Budapest argued that if these people really were refugees, not economic migrants, they should have sought asylum in the first safe country they entered, not roam illegally through Europe, violating its borders.
Erecting fences and reintroducing border checks has since become commonplace in Europe, yet the liberal Brussels elite still keeps attacking the Hungarian government—not just for its insistence on protecting the EU borders and keeping out illegal migrants, but also for its sovereigntist approach to Europe, its rejection of gender ideology, and its pro-peace attitude towards the Russo-Ukrainian war.
The European Court of Justice (ECJ) recently punished Hungary, demanding it pay a lump sum of €200 million, with an additional €1 million a day for failing to comply with EU asylum policies. In other words, the ECJ is penalising Hungary for making potential migrants apply for asylum outside of the EU.
While Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán called the politically motivated verdict “outrageous and unacceptable,” his chief of staff Gergely Gulyás said last week that, if the EU continues to impose 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.” Hungary “will offer them a one-way ticket to Brussels. If Brussels wants migrants, then it can have them,” he said.
Echoing Gulyás, the Interior Ministry’s State Secretary Bence Rétvári said on Friday, August 30th, that Brussels wants to punish Hungary for keeping out illegal migrants. Therefore, Budapest will take legal steps to ensure that Brussels also pays the bill for Hungary’s protection of the EU border.
“The EU has not made a substantial contribution to the costs of border protection, and has not shown solidarity with Hungary, which protects its borders,” the state secretary said.
Hungary has spent €2 billion since 2015—a sum Brussels now “owes” the country—prompting Hungary to seek advice from international legal experts on how best to retrieve its money.
