Budapest, Hungary. Recent noise by Brussels on how they will force member states to take unwated migrants and immigrants, may have backfired and set the stage for a slow melt down in relations with 6 nations, now telling Brussels they are not obeying their orders when it comes to migrants.
Viktor Orban,Hungary’s populist prime minister said Monday he sees no chance for a single EU-wide migration policy, just days after the bloc launched legal action against Budapest for refusing refugees under a controversial solidarity plan.
“To say that there will be one integrated, single European migration policy, I do have my doubts and I do not see any chance for this,” Viktor Orban told the Benelux and Visegrad group premiers meeting in Warsaw ahead of an EU summit in Brussels later this week. “Hungary is open to any negotiations to this end but we would like to continue to remain realists,” the Hungarian PM added.
European Union lawyers launched legal action last week against Hungary, Poland and the Czech Republic for refusing to participate in relocating 160,000 refugees under a 2015 plan set up when more than one million people landed on Europe’s shores, mainly in Italy and Greece. However Brussels was unaware that Slovenia, Croatia and Austria were now refusing the EU plan, with others ready to join them.
Brussels had set a June deadline for Warsaw and Budapest to start accepting mainly Syrian, Eritrean and Iraq asylum seekers. Prague has also come under pressure after effectively dropping out of the relocation plan. Brussels is now deeply concerned that the anti-migrant refusals may threaten the survival of the EU itself.
Orban argued Monday that his government’s rejection of refugees and migrants was intended to preserve the central European country’s identity.”Let us not create a European migration policy and this is the Hungarian position, as a result of which we will no longer be the kind of people we are now,” Orban said.
European sources have said some EU countries have been setting unacceptable conditions by refusing Muslims, black people or large families, with Eastern European states the worst for discriminating on religious or racial grounds. The EU can try to force compliance, but that may trigger calls for more “Brexit” type exits from the EU. Currently only the Baltic States and the Ukraine, which is not an EU nation yet, are offering to take in migrants for a price.