Nationalist opposition Jobbik party has welcomed Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s Monday remarks expressing support for plans to set up a dedicated border guard force.
PM Viktor Orbán announced in parliament on Monday that he had given the interior minister the order to establish a completely new, dedicated task force within the police department by September, exclusively responsible for border protection.
Orbán justified the establishment of the new group on the one hand by saying that it is not right that while there is a war in a neighboring country to the east, Hungarian soldiers are guarding the country’s southern border. On the other hand, he said, the police officers who are deployed to the southern border, far from their families, should also be relieved of this huge burden.
In reaction to the announcement, Jobbik deputy leader László György Lukács said at an online press conference on Tuesday that Jobbik had been urging the move for years, and the party is calling for setting up the task force without delay.
The security situation in the region and the pressure posed by migration on Hungary’s borders have made it necessary to send units of soldiers and police from the country’s central areas to the borders, and this has “created a vacuum” there, he said.
Setting up a stand-alone border guard service without delay is necessary and unavoidable, he said. The armed forces must focus on defense activities instead of guarding the borders, and police have an important task to combat deteriorating public security, he added.
via MTI
Featured photo by Noémi Bruzák/MTI
