From left to right: President of the Republic of Serbia Aleksandar Vucic, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban and Austrian Chancellor Karl Nehammer during a press conference in Budapest (Hungary), Monday October 3, 2022 ATTILA KISBENEDEK / AFP
Viktor Orban, isolated as ever due to his very narrow positions on Russia in the Ukraine conflict, had the opportunity to return to the stage on Monday 3 October thanks to an issue close to his heart to bring: immigration. . Indeed, the Hungarian nationalist prime minister has hosted one of his European Union (EU) counterparts in Budapest for the first time in months, in this case the conservative Austrian Chancellor Karl Nehammer, who is temporarily putting aside his disagreements on the war in Ukraine with the Hungarian leader as well with Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic, who is also known for his pro-Russian positions.
The aim of this summit was to respond to the sharp increase in migration flows on the Balkan route observed since the beginning of the year. Particularly concerned as the first country To asylum applications, Austria announced increased cooperation with its Hungarian and Serbian neighbors and Mr Nehammer denounced “the failure of the European Union’s asylum policy”. A music that could only please his Hungarian counterpart, who hadn’t hoisted a European flag on stage and had also attacked “Brussels”. [qui] happens in every human rights or rule of law procedure to take us to court,” he complained, referring to the numerous infringement procedures that the European Commission initiated against Hungary in recent years.
Read the analysis: Article reserved for our subscribers Viktor Orban’s double play with Europe
86,000 illegal crossings
The Austrian and Hungarian heads of government have called for a reform of European asylum law in order to ensure “real protection of the external borders”. Since the issue has been blocked for years by divisions between member states, they called on the European Commission to strengthen the common deportation policy. Mr Orban also reiterated his idea of installing “hotspots” outside the EU where asylum seekers would be forced to wait for their application to be processed, again a real sea serpent, same day meetings in Bratislava, Slovakia, Czech Republic also confirmed the Austrian, Slovak and Hungarian interior ministers their policy of restoring border controls.
According to Frontex, the European border protection agency, the “Balkan route”, which runs from Turkey to western Europe via Greece or Bulgaria, the countries of former Yugoslavia, then Hungary, is currently the Old Continent’s most active migration route, with more than 86,000 illegal crossings observed since January . A number that has almost doubled since 2021 and has not been seen since the great migration crisis of 2015, when almost a million refugees came to Germany, mostly from Syria and Afghanistan. Austria said it had already received 56,000 asylum applications since January, twice as many as in 2021.
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