Hungary and Slovakia have dug in their heels against proposals for every European Union state to take a quota of refugees, as Austria sought to restore normal border controls after a weekend in which more than 20,000 asylum seekers crossed the country en route to Germany.
More than 150,000 migrants have travelled through Hungary this year, many from conflict zones such in Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan and, despite construction of a razor-wire fence along its border with Serbia, several thousand people are arriving in the country each day.
Hungary’s prime minister, Viktor Orbán, is the most vocal critic of the German-led quota plan and Berlin’s decision to waive regular asylum procedures for Syrian refugees, which he says encourages economic migrants.
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He told a gathering of Hungarian envoys to EU states on Monday that people fleeing war zones should stay in the first safe country they reach, but they travel into the heart of Europe because they “want to live a German life. It has nothing to do with security.”
He said it was “absurd” for Germany to spend billions of euro on refugees there, rather than “giving the money to the countries around the crisis zone, where [they] should be stopped in the first place”.
“It would be better for everyone. They wouldn’t come here. It would cost less. And our approach couldn’t be called into question morally either.”
Mr Orbán said Hungary had become the EU’s “black sheep” due to his tough approach to migration and plans to build a four-metre-high steel barrier on the Serbian frontier, and to have soldiers reinforce police units in the border area.
“Even though the situation won’t change overnight, we will gradually achieve results and the time will come when we can tell our Austrian and German friends that Hungary’s southern borders are hermetically sealed.”
Only once borders were fully controlled, he argued, could the EU discuss coherently how many refugees to accept.
In Slovakia, the interior ministry reiterated support for a “voluntary” system for taking refugees, as reports emerged of a new EU quota plan under which the country would take more than 2,000 people.
Senior Slovak government officials have said Muslim refugees could pose a security threat and would be hard to integrate, given the country’s lack of mosques.
Slovakia’s president Andrej Kiska defied its populist government on Monday, however, calling it “untenable that we are not prepared and able to understand our partners who are appealing for European solidarity.”
Old divisions
“Nobody who has a heart wants to stand by and watch that much human tragedy, suffering and death. Neither Europe as a whole, nor central Europe specifically, will benefit from reviving old divisions between old and new [EU] member states . . . An agreement is in the interests of all.”
Austria, which borders Hungary and Slovakia, has softened its stance towards migrants since 71 people, thought to be Syrian refugees, were found dead in the back of a Hungarian-registered truck parked on a motorway near Vienna last month.
“Somebody who seriously claims to solve the refugee problem with razor wire, and then creates such chaos has disqualified himself politically,” Austrian chancellor Werner Faymann said of Mr Orbán in a newspaper interview on Sunday.
Austrian police on Monday said they were intensifying checks for people smugglers while returning to a normal border regime after the weekend’s influx of people, which caused traffic chaos on the motorway from Hungary.
Early in the morning, at least 150 cars driven by Austrian and German volunteers brought hundreds of asylum seekers into Austria from Hungary. “I just knew I had to do something to help,” said Tsamira Weissflug at Budapest’s main train station on Sunday night, after driving some 700km from Germany.
Something concrete
“This is a situation in which a private person can help. Not just with ‘blah, blah, blah’ but with something concrete. Someone needs me, I have a car, I have the time, so
vá
monos
– let’s go.”
Last Friday, after hundreds of migrants forced Hungary to lift travel restrictions by walking along railway lines and its main motorway towards Austria, thousands travelled west on buses and trains.
But Hungary stopped running buses to the Austrian border on Sunday, leaving migrants in Budapest confused over which train to catch and uncertain that it would not take them to a camp for asylum seekers – as happened to hundreds of people last week. Others simply cannot afford to buy a train ticket.
Among the people Ms Weissflug drove to Austria were Amar Saleh and Yasim al-Eriksousi, Syrians from Damascus.
“I want to be in Germany, and I want my wife and daughter to join me,” said Mr Saleh.
“I wish they were with me now.
“My girl is only 14 months old, and I haven’t seen her since I left home on 1st August.”
