The Hungarian government has submitted a referendum initiative on the European Union’s mandatory quotas on migrants, Prime Minister Viktor Orbán announced on Wednesday at an extraordinary press conference held during the break of a government meeting in the Parliament. The referendum question will be:
Do you want the European Union to require the compulsory resettlement of non-Hungarian citizens to Hungary without authorization by the Hungarian Parliament?
Viktor Orbán said the “migrant quotas would redraw the ethnic, cultural and religious map of Hungary and Europe” and the “key to democracy is that we cannot take decisive decisions over the heads of the people”. According to the Prime Minister, the cabinet is responding to public sentiment now. “We think that introducing resettlement quotas for migrants without the backing of the people equals an abuse of power,” he said. The essence of citizenship loyalty that others cannot decide for us, we ourselves have to decide directly about this, Orbán insisted.
The Hungarian Prime Minister previously told lawmakers that the most important question of the forthcoming period is whether or not the EU will succeed in pushing a new EU migrant system “down the throats of the Central European countries”. He reiterated that the EU has already adopted a one-off decision on the resettlement of 160,000 migrants. Hungary as well as Slovakia have not accepted this decision and have launched legal action in order to obtain a court ruling that “this obligation was imposed on Hungary unlawfully”, he said.
via MTI and kormany.hu photo: Szilárd Koszticsák – MTI