Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s authorities has already constructed a metal fence to shut down the migrant route over Hungary’s southern border with Serbia.
Advertisement
“We have urged Greece and the European Council to put collectively a joint European drive to shield the exterior Schengen border”, Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto stated in an interview on Thursday.
“We will send five very specialised cars with night vision, with equipment that will allow [officers] to observe the whole border”, Kopacz said.
Szijjarto said sealing off the border would create a clampdown to the situation on the Serbian border, where the migrants headed for Croatia. If Mr. Orban’s government closes the border with neighboring Croatia, migrants will only be able to enter Hungary at official border crossings set up exclusively for migrants “in a controlled way”, according to the prime minister, and in line with the rules of the document-free Schengen area.
“That has yet to be done, so I hope today we can agree to seal the Greek border, in which Hungary is willing to be an actor”. There have been more than 386,000 migrants that have made their way into Hungary during 2015. It has also clamped down on illegal crossings of the border fence, punishing migrants with expulsion in court.
Hungary’s new razor-wire fence and national direction mark a sharp reversal for a country that played a historic role in crumbling of the Berlin Wall – by opening a border fence with Austria in 1989 that triggered a sudden exodus of East Germans to the West.
“With a strict protection of our southern borders… we give the message that it does not make sense to hit the road”.
Advertisement
“To demonstrate their determination to act in the field of protection of the Schengen border, the countries of the Visegrad Group have come together in a spirit of genuine solidarity and provided Hungary, who now bears the heaviest burden, with the necessary security assistance”, the leaders of the four nations said in a meeting in Brussels that preceded an European Union summit on the migrant crisis.
