Budapest (The Brussels Morning Newspaper) – Hungary is prepared to deliver free one-way tickets to Brussels for migrants and asylum seekers trying to enter the European Union, a minister stated in response to hefty penalties recently imposed on the country over its restrictive asylum policies.
How Is Hungary Responding to EU Penalties with Free Tickets for Migrants?
Talking at a news conference in Budapest, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s chief of staff, Gergely Gulyás, charged a June ruling by the European Court of Justice that ordered Hungary to produce a fine of $216 for persistently violating the bloc’s asylum rules, and an additional 1 million euros per day until it brings its procedures into line with EU law. “Brussels wants to force us at any cost to let migrants in,” Gulyás stated, referring to the EU’s headquarters in Belgium.
He stated that if the EU continues to force restrictions on Hungary that “does not make it possible to detain migrants at the border,” his country will present every migrant “transport to Brussels free of charge.”
How Has Hungary’s Migration Policy Evolved Since the 2015 Crisis?
Hungary’s government has taken a hard streak on people entering the country since well over 1 million people entered Europe in 2015, most of them escaping conflict in Syria. The country built fences guarded by razor wire on its southern borders with Serbia and Croatia and a pair of transit zones for holding asylum seekers on its border with Serbia. Those transit zones have since closed.
EU has taken point with Hungary’s unusually rigid asylum system and questioned the bloc’s top court to fine Budapest for forcing people pursuing international protection to travel to its embassies in Serbia or Ukraine to apply for a travel pass, a violation of EU rules that oblige all member nations to have common procedures for granting asylum.
Mr Orbán, a right-wing populist who is invariably at odds with the EU, has earlier pledged that Hungary would not alter its migration and asylum policies regardless of any rulings from the European Court of Justice.
Gulyás criticised the fines Hungary has incurred over its asylum system, stating: “Hungary doesn’t want to pay this daily penalty indefinitely, so we will make it feasible for people to enter if they want and will deliver them a one-way ticket to Brussels.” “If Brussels wants migrants, then it can have them,” he continued.
