Hungary has accused the European Union's top officials of causing its refugee crisis and warned them to prepare for "millions" of new arrivals to the bloc, as hundreds of migrants massed outside a Budapest train station to demand passage to Germany.
A day after allowing migrants for the first time to board international trains, Hungarian police yesterday morning barred about 1,000 asylum seekers from Keleti train station, prompting an hours-long stand-off outside the building.
As some migrants waved tickets for trains to Munich, Berlin and Hamburg, others chanted “Germany, Germany”, “Freedom” and “Merkel” – showing their desire to travel to a country that has pledged to accept some 800,000 refugees this year.
More than 150,000 migrants have passed through Hungary so far this year, and its prime minister Viktor Orban says it is struggling to cope and cannot accept their return from western Europe under the EU's so-called Dublin regulation, by which asylum seekers are returned to the first EU state they enter.
Long-term measures
Mr Orban’s office piled pressure on the
European Commission
before he travels to Brussels tomorrow to meet its top officials, saying the EU must take “long-term measures” to “prepare for further millions of people” coming to the bloc.
"A wave of long-term mass migration has hit Europe," said Mr Orban's chief of staff, Janos Lazar, adding that the crisis had been caused by "the policies of the past 10 years . . . the leftist approach of the European Commission, according to which anybody should be allowed into the territory of the European Union. "
Mr Lazar said “the EU has failed to manage the situation, and the problem is the EU itself, which is incapable of protecting its own borders.”
After talks with European Commission chiefs tomorrow, Mr Orban is expected to travel to Prague on Friday for a meeting with Czech, Slovak and Polish leaders who have taken a broadly similar line on the migration crisis, and reject a German-led plan to distribute refugees around the EU according to a quota system.
Hungary completed a 175km razor-wire fence along its border with Serbia last weekend, but it has failed to halt migrants; a 4m-high steel security barrier is scheduled for completion along the frontier before winter sets in.
Fulfilling obligations
Budapest’s foreign minister
Peter Szijjarto
insisted yesterday that, despite Monday’s decision to allow thousands of migrants to leave on trains, Hungary was fulfilling its obligations under EU law.
"We plan to register all migrants regardless of the fact that we are not the first member state they enter," he said, referring to Greece's location near the start of the Balkan migration route into Europe; since 2011, Greece has been considered incapable of handling returnees.
“We will register everyone who submits the request for asylum and carry out the procedure . . . If the decision is positive the refugee can stay, but if it is not positive we cannot give shelter to the economic migrants, we cannot bear that burden, so they will be returned where they come from,” Mr Szijjarto added.
Humanitarian gesture
Germany announced last month that it would not send Syrian asylum seekers back to other EU states, but Berlin insisted yesterday that this was a humanitarian gesture that did not cancel the Dublin regulation.
"We must push through uniform European asylum policies . . . We observe through practical experience every day that the current legal framework is evidently not being practised," said German chancellor Angela Merkel.
