EU Member States recorded just over 239,000 illegal border crossing attempts last year.Continue reading
The Hungarian government has received a new demand for payment from Brussels last week. However, Budapest will block any payments, and will use all legal and political means at its disposal in order to protect the country’s borders and stop illegal migration, the Ministry of European Union Affairs said in response to a request from Magyar Nemzet.
The European Commission is now demanding EUR 60 million from the Hungarian government, since the European Court of Justice has fined Hungary for allegedly violating migration rules. The Ministry of European Union Affairs confirmed the news to Magyar Nemzet with the following statement.
“Yesterday, the Government of Hungary received the Commission’s payment notice. The Hungarian government will not pay the fine and will use all legal and political means at its disposal to protect the country’s borders and stop illegal migration.
Hungary’s position has been clear for years: we will protect Hungary’s borders and we will not allow Brussels to turn our country into an immigration country.
Brussels continues to pursue a pro-migration policy and has not given up on bringing more immigrants into Europe.”
In 2020, the European Court of Justice ruled that Hungarian laws do not meet European standards on migration and asylum. The reasoning was that asylum seekers did not have access to legal remedies and due process, and were not adequately accommodated in transit zones, writes Index. The European Commission has gone to court to enforce the implementation of the judgement, resulting in a basic fine of EUR 200 million. Since June 2024, the fine has been increasing by EUR 1 million per day until the judgement is implemented. The Court sent payment notices in September and November. According to a Commission source, if the fine is not paid, the amount of it will be deducted from the EU funds earmarked for Hungary, as is the case for the basic fine.
In a recent interview with ATV, the Minister heading the Prime Minister’s Office said that the European Commission wants to collect these funds from Hungary, but “in the end we will collect them from the Commission”. According to Gergely Gulyás, the EU fine is huge, but it would cost more than that if hundreds of thousands of migrants were here, destroying the country, public security and forever changing the political nation that has evolved organically over the past centuries.
The Secretary of State for International Communication and Relations recently talked about member states’ sovereignty in an interview to Eurázsia Magazine. Zoltán Kovács said that the European Commission has been taking away powers and elements of sovereignty from member states in more and more areas for a decade now. “The treaties clearly set out which elements of sovereignty are transferred to the Member States. This does not mean that they have given up their sovereignty, but that they are exercising these elements of sovereignty jointly. The EU institutions are afraid of tampering with the treaties, so they practice stealthy forms of devolution. Just think of the purchase of vaccines, the joint purchase of gas, or the migration pact,” he pointed out.
Via Magyar Nemzet, Index; Featured photo via Pixabay