On Monday György Bakondi, Chief Security Advisor to the Prime Minister, told public television channel M1 that an agreement between the EU and Turkey is not in itself enough to solve the migration crisis, as migration from Libya to Italy has significantly increased.
The Chief Security Advisor was asked about the ten-point action plan to protect the EU’s external borders and the right of free movement within the EU, which Prime Minister Viktor Orbán presented in Lisbon on Friday.
Mr. Bakondi said that legality must be restored at the borders. He pointed out that for a while Hungary’s position on illegal migration was not accepted in the EU, but after a few months’ delay the Government’s proposals have yielded results.
He stressed that the essence of the Schengen Agreement is the protection of the EU’s external borders, therefore the EU should act accordingly. The sovereignty of Member States should not be undermined by making migration-related decisions in Brussels, he said.
Mr. Bakondi said that if the EU had observed the Schengen regulations in the first place, only a few thousand migrants would have arrived in the continent last year – instead of some one and a half million.
In an interview with public broadcaster Kossuth Rádió on Monday, Mr. Bakondi said that a given EU Member State may decide to solve its demographic issues and labour shortage through migration, but Brussels must not centrally prescribe the acceptance of migrants.
Mr. Bakondi called the idea of introducing a common benefits system for migrants arriving in the EU “dreadful”, because eventually they could receive more money than citizens could earn “through hard work”.