“It was an illusion to think that the change in Austrian chancellorship would bring with it a change of culture; the statement by Christian Kern on Tuesday is deeply disappointing”, Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade Péter Szijjártó said at a press conference in Budapest.
The Minister stressed: The previous Chancellor “compared Hungary to the darkest dictatorship of the 20th century in an unacceptable manner”, and although he is no longer in office, the new Chancellor has also not brought a change in culture.
The new Austrian Chancellor told reporters in Vienna that it is an illusion to think that the problem posed by refugees can be eliminated “by changing the state into an authoritarian state system” as Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán is doing.
“Austrian domestic politics is characterised by frustration and hypocrisy with relation to the immigration crisis. While one of the most heated debates concerns whether Austria should seal the Brenner Pass, which may well be a legitimate and justifiable decision, the Chancellor shouldn’t make such statements”, Mr. Szijjártó explained.
In reply to a question on the Austrian presidential elections, the Hungarian Foreign Minister said: “The only thing Hungary can do it to respect the decision of the Austrian people”. With relation to Monday’s meeting of European Union foreign ministers in Brussels, Mr. Szijjártó also said that ministers had received a proposal concerning the immigration crisis that said nothing about the security of Europe and the European people, did not mention the protection of borders and did not even include the measures required for the survival of the Schengen system. “Had we adopted that proposal, the resolution would only have taken the EU even deeper into the current dead end”, he said, adding that “on top of which the original draft assumed that the continued motivation of immigration was acceptable”. He made it clear that Hungary would exercise its veto right if its four proposals were not included in the text, and in the end they were all included”, he told reporters.
The resolution states that the Council will continue to look into the Schengen 2.0 plan, and the proposal is now before the EU’s institutions.
The importance of border protection was also included in the Council Conclusions, as was the fact that the question of who is entitled to asylum status must be decided before they enter the territory of the European Union, meaning hot spots must be established outside the EU. “Once someone is here it is difficult to send them back; the re-acceptance mechanisms are not working properly and only some 400 people have been returned to Turkey from Greece during the past 2 months”, he explained.
Hungary’s fourth proposal was that the EU must also provide financial support to Iraqi Kurdistan, which is currently caring for tens of thousands of refugees, he continued. In the end, Hungary supported the adoption of the document in view of the fact that Hungary’s proposals were all included, the Hungarian Foreign Minister pointed out.