Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orban has urged the EU to round up and deport all illegal immigrants to guarded camps on "an island or some shore of north Africa", as he comes under increasing pressure over his stance on the refugee crisis.
Ten days before Hungary holds a controversial referendum on the EU's response to the arrival last year of more than one million migrants and refugees, Mr Orban said "those who came illegally must be rounded up and shipped out".
“We must set up large refugee camps outside the EU, with armed security and financial support provided by the union. Everyone who came illegally must return there. There they can file for asylum,” he told Hungary’s Origo news website.
"This could be an island or some shore of north Africa, but the security and supplies of that area must be guaranteed by the EU in its own interest," he added.
Mr Orban has led central European resistance to a German-led plan for refugees to be distributed among EU member states, and he has called the mostly Muslim migrants a “poison” which threatens Europe’s security, culture and identity.
He supports a No vote in the October 2nd referendum that will ask Hungarians whether they want to allow the EU to mandate the resettlement of foreign citizens in the country without the approval of the nation’s parliament.
“I love this country the way it is, and I don’t want anyone to change it through external pressure,” Mr Orban said in the interview published on Thursday.
A spokesman for Hungary's government told The Irish Times on Wednesday that "in principle" it would like to see the EU's fundamental Lisbon Treaty changed in light of the challenges posed by the refugee crisis.
Hungary built fences along its borders with Serbia and Croatia last autumn to divert refugees and migrants heading from Turkey to Germany, and refuses to take back asylum seekers who transited the country on their way west, as other EU states insist it must under the bloc's so-called Dublin regulation.
Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden reportedly wrote jointly to Brussels this month, calling Hungary's refusal "a violation of the EU law and it is not acceptable" and urging the bloc to "act promptly" in response.
Also this month, Austrian interior minister Wolfgang Sobotka said Vienna would "turn to the courts if Hungary does not take back those asylum seekers who, according to EU law, must request asylum in the country in which they first entered the European Union. "
“States or groups of states that permanently break the law have to expect legal consequences . . . [Austria] must see that the European Union acts according to the law,” he added.
This week, Britain challenged Hungary over a government referendum-campaign leaflet that claims that parts of several UK cities are among some 900 “no-go zones” around Europe that are highly dangerous due to their large immigrant communities; several other EU states reportedly have complained to Budapest about the same leaflet.
