Hungary and Serbia will keep defending European borders from successive migration waves even if neither help nor gratitude are forthcoming from those being protected, Prime Minister Viktor Orbán said after a joint meeting of the two countries’ governments in Budapest.
The Hungarian prime minister explained that due to the American failure, Europe can expect millions of migrants making their way to Europe from Afghanistan. He added that we should not have the illusion of thinking in Europe, because, as he said, “they had never rushed to our aid in past centuries, and we cannot expect that now either”.
“We are defending Serbia, we are defending Hungary, we are defending ourselves, but we all know that these migrants do not want to live in Serbia and not in Hungary, they are going to Germany, so when we defend ourselves now, as so many times in history, we are defending Europe, especially Germany, and this is so even if we can’t expect any recognition or gratitude at all,” Orbán said at a joint press conference with Serbian Prime Minister Ana Brnabić.
Orbán emphasized that today, Central Europe and Serbia also have a prominent place in the world economy. He said this position could be threatened by a wave of migrants. As he said: those who previously supported migration — governments, NGOs, Soros organizations — now support migration from Afghanistan in the same way, but this is in sharp contrast to the interests of Hungary and Serbia.
Hungary is also committed to Serbia’s membership of the European Union “up to a thousand percent” because without it, the security of the internal parts of Europe cannot be guaranteed.
“It is impossible to create hotspots here, so that security issues overwrite the level of economic development here,” Orbán emphasized. He pointed out that it is in Hungary’s interest to have good neighborly relations between the two countries, and as the Balkans is an easily destabilized region, it is extremely important to be able to integrate the region into the European community.
At the summit, Brnabić said that sooner or later another wave of migration will emerge. She says that the solution would be for migrants to come in a controlled form and to be checked in the first EU member state they arrive in.
“People should be helped in such a way that they do not have to leave their homeland and do not have to go to Europe, as Hungary has previously called for,” she added.
Title image: Serbian Prime Minister Ana Brnabić (L) and her Hungarian counterpart Viktor Orbán at a joint government meeting of the two countries. (source: Facebook)
