At the emergency summit of the EU Heads of State and Government convened for Thursday, Prime Minister Viktor Orbán will argue for Member States to receive as much freedom in solving their own problems as possible.
The Prime Minister said that “it is going to be a difficult summit”. “We are going to discuss a topic which is emotionally difficult for everyone, as hundreds of people have lost their lives unnecessarily”, he added, in reference to Sunday’s tragedy, when at least 700 migrants trying to get from North Africa to Italy drowned in the Mediterranean Sea.
“We all have a bad conscience to some extent, as we all wonder whether the European refugee system is really working properly, and whether or not we should have amended it earlier”, Mr. Orbán noted. He went on to say that he believed “this summit is going to be one in which both our hearts and our minds will have to be in the right place. (…) The mind is important, because if we want to find a solution to the problem, we need to make quick and good decisions”.
The Prime Minister said that Hungary’s standpoint is clear: “We believe that if we are given the task of legislating on the situation of refugees coming to Hungary, we can do it”. According to Mr. Orbán the problem today is that “we are bound by EU regulations, which compromise the effectiveness of the Hungarian way of handling the migration problem”.
“If there are common problems, Hungary is ready to cooperate and to make offers in order to take its share in jointly solving them. (…) In cases which concern us – because we, too, have refugees, but they do not arrive across the sea – we would like to solve the problems ourselves; and we could solve them ourselves”, the Prime Minister declared.