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Hungary’s Orban says ‘Fences protect Europe’ ahead of EU migration summit | – #Hungarys #Orban #Fences #protect #Europe #ahead #migration #summit

BUDAPEST/BRUSSELS, Feb 7 (Reuters) – Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban on Tuesday Europe He called on the Union to fund border fences and revived a long-rejected idea ahead of a summit of bloc leaders to discuss curbing illegal immigration.

27 national The EU leader’s meeting was called after Austria and the Netherlands led a growing chorus of complaints about the surge in arrivals. The bloc’s border agency said there were 330,000 irregular crossings last year, the highest since 2016.

EU states are sharply divided over sharing the responsibility for caring for refugees on their soil, and have focused for years on tightening their external borders to prevent people from arriving via unofficial and often deadly routes.

Countries including Poland, Hungary and Slovenia have built border fences to keep out refugees and migrants, although the EU executive, which manages the bloc’s shared budget, Europe The commission has so far refused to pay for these barriers, saying it would be against liberal democratic values. human rights.

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MTI state news according to the head of the agency’s press service, in a meeting with his colleagues from Poland, Belgium, Finland, Malta and Bulgaria before the summit, Orban called for EU funding for such projects and said that “fences protect the whole of Europe”. .

Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen has previously ruled out funding “barbed wire or walls”, although money for physical border infrastructure such as enforcement surveillance equipment based in Brussels offer does.

“BROKEN”

The EU says Syrians, Afghans and Tunisians dominated arrivals last year, and that only a third of the people will receive asylum, while the rest must be deported.

While hosting several million people fleeing Russia’s war in neighboring Ukraine, the bloc is trying to send more people back to the Middle East, North Africa and South Asia as rising illegal arrivals fuel tougher policies.

In a joint letter ahead of the summit, Malta, Denmark, Greecethe leaders of Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Austria and Slovakia said that the EU’s “current asylum system is broken”.

“Illegal migration has again become one of the most urgent problems of the EU. “Without renewed and successful efforts… irregular migration to Europe can only be expected to continue and increase in the coming years.”

But deep divisions among the 27 EU countries over migrants and refugees mean agreeing a new, comprehensive migration and asylum system for the bloc before the next European elections in 2024 is a tall order.

Rights groups criticize the EU’s increasingly restrictive approach to migration as both illegal and inhumane. Other critics say that talking tough about migration with right-wing voters political serves to score points and does not take into account labor shortages in an aging Europe.

Written by Gabriela Baczynska, edited by Tomasz Janowski

Our standards: Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

2023-02-08 11:47:29
Source – reuters

Translation“24 HOURS”



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