New York: "Hungary must exit from the Global Compact for Migration." From the United Nations, Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade of Hungary Péter Szijjártó harshly criticized the final draft of the UN agreement on migration. On Friday 13th, July, the UN General Assembly reached a deal after more than a year of negotiations. However, Hungary showed to refuse the multilateralist approach: "We need to protect our external borders in EU," Mr. Szijjártó said, pointing out that “this is the only way” to handle the recent migration flow in Europe from North Africa. “It is totally at odds with common sense, Hungary’s interests and the intent to restore European security,” Mr. Szijjártó also said to the press referring to the UN Global Compact of Migration.
The position of Hungary has always been clear and sever toward migration. According to Orban government’s approach, security has always been the main issue to face. “Almost 1,5 million migrants have arrived in Europe past of the last years, but we don’t know who they are,” Minister Szijjártó said to American Television News, on the margin of the intergovernmental negotiations on the UN Global Compact for Migration, Friday 13th. “We want to keep on protecting our internal border, too: the only way to enter in the territories of Hungary will be the legal way," he added.
American President Donald Trump, who pulled the US out of the UN Global Compact of Migration last December, recently asked Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban to keep his borders strong and to resist: "The US President Trump can be sure we will make it," Mr. Szijjártó pointed out.
According to Donald Tusk, President of the European Commission, the number of migrants illegally entering the EU have dropped 96% since the 2015 peak. Although those numbers, Hungary still took a critical view of the migration flow: "There are new alternative active routes for migration such as the one from Albania, Bosnia-Herzegovina, and Montenegro and we can't accept this situation," Mr. Szijjártó said to American Television News.
In 2015, the EU adopted its refugee redistribution scheme, after months of haggling as the migrant crisis unfolded. Moreover, in September 2017 the European Commission has unveiled a new plan that would allow for 50,000 refugees - mostly from a host of African countries - to be resettled to Europe over the next two years. Populist governments like Hungary, Poland, however, have always refused to respect their resettlement quota: "Those are unacceptable, and we are not alone to think about it in this way," Mr. Szijjártó confirmed to American Television News. The Czech Republic and Slovakia opposed the logic behind the relocation of refugees, too.
The European Commission has always pointed out that if all the countries had accepted it, then the refugee resettlement system only worked well. Minister Szijjártó doesn't agree on this position: "It was a failure for other reasons such as because it has stolen sovereignty to the single countries to decide and because it encouraged people from North Africa to migrate in our continent" he added, also calling on a modernization of the Dublin Regulation: "We must renew it, adapting it to the new context. We must concentrate on it on protecting the borders. We must focus on establishing hot spots outside the EU to understand who is allowed to come to our continent," he concluded.