Viktor Orban received its Austrian and Serbian counterparts this Monday. After having castigated the EU asylum policy, the heads of government called for a reform of the European rules in the matter.
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isolated like never because of its positions very close to Russia on the conflict in Ukraine, Viktor Orban had the opportunity, Monday October 3, to get back a little thanks to a subject that is dear to him: immigration. The Hungarian nationalist Prime Minister has, in fact, received in Budapest for the first time for months one of his European Union (EU) counterparts, in this case the Austrian Conservative Chancellor Karl Nehammer, who temporarily set aside His differences in views of the war in Ukraine to appear with the Magyar head of government as well as with Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic, also known for his positions close to Russia.
This summit aimed to respond to the sharp increase in migratory flows observed since the start of the year on the Balkan road. Particularly worried as the first country of recording asylum requests, Austria has announced enhanced cooperation with its Hungarian and Serbian neighbors, and Mr. Nehammer denounced “the failure of the asylum policy of the European Union “. Music that could only please his Hungarian counterpart, who also attacked “Brussels [who] arrives with any procedure on human rights or the rule of law to drag us Before the courts, “he castigated, in reference to the multiple procedures of offenses undertaken in recent years by the European Commission against Hungary.
86,000 illegal passages
The Austrian and Hungarian heads of government asked for a reform of the European asylum rules to ensure “real protection of external borders”. As the subject has been blocked for years by the divisions between a member state, they have called on the European Commission to strengthen the common eviction policy. Mr. Orban also repeated his idea of installing “hotspots” outside the EU where asylum seekers would be forced to wait for the processing of their request, there too a real sea snake. In Bratislava, Slovakia, the Czech, Austrian, Slovak and Hungarian interior ministers have also confirmed their policy of restoring border controls.
According to Frontex, the European border guards agency, the “Balkan route”, which leads from Turkey to Western Europe via Greece or Bulgaria, the countries of ex- Yugoslavia, then Hungary, is currently the most active migratory route on the old continent with more than 86,000 illegal passages observed since January. A figure that has almost doubled since 2021 and had not been seen since the great migration crisis of 2015, when nearly a million refugees from Syria and Aghanistan had joined Germany. Austria said it has already received 56,000 asylum applications since January, a number twice as high as in 2021.
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