Bence Rétvári, the interior ministry state secretary said on Saturday that Brussels' proposal on mandatory migrant settlement quotas would establish the European Union's "biggest migrant ghetto" in Hungary.
The state secretary told MTI that the proposal would require Hungary to assess 28.3% of all refugee applications from migrants arriving in the EU. Germany would have to process just 1.4%, France 2% and Sweden 0.2% of the applications, he added. Hungary would have to maintain an apparatus capable of assessing 11,320 applications simultaneously, resulting in the presence of “tens of thousands” of illegal migrants in the country, Rétvári said. “Hungary will not accept mandatory quotas, the threat of fines or the establishment of migrant camps,” he added. He noted that 98% of participants in a referendum in 2016, some 3.3 million people, had said “no” to mandatory resettlement quotas. He also faulted Brussels for “breaking its own rule” when the decision on the mandatory quotas was taken by a qualified majority rather than a consensus. “We won’t let the EU decide on whom we’ll allow into our country,” Rétvári said. “That can be decided only by Hungarians, not the bureaucrats in Brussels,” he added. He said refugee applications should be assessed with the applicants still outside of the EU.
Photo credit: Facebook/Rétvári Bence