Hungary Aims to Muster Opposition to EU Migrant Quota Scheme with New Website

World » EU | April 1, 2016, Friday // 16:26
Bulgaria: Hungary Aims to Muster Opposition to EU Migrant Quota Scheme with New Website Armoured personnel carriers of the Hungarian Army patrol the area along the temporary border fence on the Hungarian-Serbian border near Roszke, 180 kms southeast of Budapest, Hungary, 19 March 2016. Photo EPA/BGNES

The Hungarian government has said on a new website that the mandatory quotas for migrants set for EU member states increase the terrorist risk in Europe, AFP reported on Friday.

The government also warns of risks to European identity and culture from uncontrolled flow of migrants into Europe on the website aimed at boosting opposition to an EU plan to distribute migrants among member states, according to AFP.

The plan sets mandatory quotas for sharing out 160,000 migrants around the EU. The Hungarian government voted against the relocation scheme in September and hasn't taken in a single asylum seeker of the 1,100 migrants relocated so far.

This week’s launch of the website ahead of a referendum in Hungary on the EU quota plan aims to give a boost to opposition to the mandatory relocation scheme, AFP said.

The main concern comes from the fact that "illegal migrants cross the borders unchecked, so we do not know who they are and what their intentions are,” AFP quoted the Hungarian government as saying on the website.

The government in Budapest claims on the website that there are more than 900 "no-go areas" with large immigrant populations in Europe – for example in Berlin, London, Paris, or Stockholm – in which the authorities have "little or no control" and "norms of the host society barely prevail," the site says, according to AFP.

A Hungarian government spokesman has told AFP that the information on the website was collected from sources publicly available on the Internet. The spokesman hasn’t given further details.

At the referendum expected in the second half of the year the Hungarians will be asked whether they want the EU to prescribe the mandatory relocation of non-Hungarian citizens to the country without the approval of parliament, according to AFP.

Meanwhile, Hungary’s Foreign Minister Peter Szijj?rt? has said that his country was right to look with suspicion at the masses of people demanding entry from Serbia in September 2015, particularly in the wake of March 22 suicide bombings in Brussels.

In an exclusive interview with the Foreign Policy magazine in Washington on Thursday, Szijj?rt? has said that “if there’s an uncontrolled and unregulated influx” of several thousands of people arriving daily, “then it increases [the] threat of terror,” according to foreignpolicy.com.

Hungarian riot police used tear gas and water cannons to disperse migrants and refugees trying to break through the country’s closed border with Serbia last September. The migrants and refugees demanded that Hungarian authorities let them enter the country from where they would proceed north to wealthier countries of the EU’s borderless Schengen zone such as Austria and Germany. Police action drew fire from governments and human rights groups at the time.

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Tags: Peter Szijj?rt?, Hungary, government, migrants, asylum seekers, relocation, quota, EU, plan, Referendum, tear gas, Serbia, Austria, Germany

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