The European Parliament continues to have pro-migration proposals on the migration pact and would like to see more and more exceptions to the legislation on who should be allowed to enter the European Union on a facilitated basis and have their applications assessed afterward, Bence Rétvári, Parliamentary State Secretary of the Ministry of Interior, said at a press conference in Brussels on Tuesday.
Negotiations between the European Commission, the Council and the European Parliament are ongoing. The EU legislative body is trying to further soften the bill and make it more migration-friendly. Still, the EU wants to force it at all costs before the EU elections - the state secretary added after a meeting of Member States’ interior ministers.
"We have seen before how the European Union even went against its own rules of procedure, by rewriting them it did not seek consensus, but imposed its proposal by force. What we can see now is that they want us to accept an as fast and as pro-migration proposal as possible which is not a good one" – the State Secretary said.
According to Rétvári, the European Union has been on the wrong track since 2015, and the migration pact would only be a continuation and reinforcement of this, which is why a new approach is needed, primarily to protect borders and to process asylum applications outside the territory of the European Union.
He emphasised that the longer the EU delays facing reality, the more difficult it will be to correct its previous mistakes. Illegal migration and human trafficking networks are becoming more and more challenging to confront every day as they are becoming more organised and have more and more capital, he added. The human traffickers' fees are often paid with the money that migrants in Western Europe receive as aid, he said, adding that the assistance is used to pay the costs of those who smuggle their relatives and friends to Europe.
Bence Rétvári pointed out: "the European Union can decide in which direction it will proceed: either it will restore the control on 7,500 kilometers of its internal borders, or stop illegal migration on the 440-kilometer land section of the border shared by Bulgaria and Greece with Turkey, on the external border of the European Union. Hungary supports the latter".
He also said that, according to figures published at the Council meeting, illegal migrants pay fees ranging from €5,000 to €16,000 to human traffickers, and pointed out that border controls have been reintroduced in several places in Europe.
" In Europe, there will slowly be more border controls than not. At the Council meeting, several participants noted that the European Union's area without internal borders is a thing of the past and that border controls have eradicated the Europe without borders.
He pointed out the increased threat of terrorism in the EU during the festive period, the increased presence of police in public places, and the closure of synagogues in several places.
"While the Israeli football team has come to Hungary to play its international matches in safety, other countries are stepping up protection of Jewish institutions, especially those under attack by Arab illegal migrants," he recalled.
Bence Rétvári also pointed out that a short video was shown to the participants of the Council meeting about illegal migrants aggressively acting on Hungary's southern border, attacking police officers several times with firearms. He said that despite the video being shown during the last item on the agenda, "there was a stunned silence in the meeting room of Brussels."
"Many people took pictures of some of the video frames, and many of them asked for this footage. The overwhelming majority of decision-makers and interior ministers in Brussels had never been to Hungary's southern border and were completely unaware of exactly what was happening there," he pointed out.
Bence Rétvári said it was thought-provoking that decisions on the migration pact had been taken for months, but when they saw on video what was actually happening at the Hungarian southern border, there was shock and silence in the room.
Source: MTI-Hungarian News Agency
