Austrian authorities said on Thursday that 8100 had entered from Hungary in the previous 36 hours. News. Orban was speaking on Wednesday when he defended Hungary’s “democratic right” to deal with the refugees differently than Germany.
Advertisement
“I don’t doubt Germany’s right to define its moral obligations for itself”, Orban said.
“The more money we give to address the root causes that are driving people to leave, the less likely they will be to leave their homes”, German Chancellor Angela Merkel said.
“Tonight we have a common understanding that we can not continue like we did before,” he said, adding that the crisis will only deepen.
“We won’t implement this decision because we think it can’t work”, Fico said.
Hungary may consider opening a “corridor” for migrants to pass through from Croatia by train or bus if Austria and Germany want one and take full responsibility, Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s chief of staff said on Thursday. According to the United Nations refugee agency, more than 477,000 people have arrived in Europe so far this year via often-dangerous sea crossings, and 6,000 now land on Europe’s shores every day – up sharply from August, when the figure stood at 4,200 per day.
He revived recent proposals in what he called a six-point plan to resolve the crisis.
Orban instead revisited a plan that includes persuading Greece to hand over its borders to European Union countries willing to help police them, as well as separating asylum-seekers from “economic migrants” before they reach the passport-free Schengen zone, AFP reported.
Orban said he would also press fellow EU leaders to agree on a common list of safe countries of origin to which migrants can be returned, and to pitch in one percent of their EU income and their EU contributions to an emergency fund.
He suggested developing partnerships with the countries whose participation in solving the migrant crisis is inevitable – Turkey and Russian Federation, according to MTI.
He additionally criticized the fence Hungary had erected at its border with Serbia, which, while legally possible to do, has “very obviously not hindered the entry of refugees into Hungary”.
That is a demand of Germany and France but also of ex-communist states like Hungary, the Czech Republic and Slovakia which fought against being obliged to take a share of asylum-seekers but were over-ruled in a rare vote on such a sensitive issue at a ministerial meeting on Tuesday.
Advertisement
Orban said yesterday that he would only consider voluntary measures to accept asylum-seekers.
