Hungary is new hot spot on migrant route into EU - Part 1

The Latest: Slovaks OK challenge to EU refugee-sharing plan

Slovakia's prime minister says his government has formally approved challenging a European Union decision to redistribute 120,000 asylum-seekers among the bloc's 28 nations.

Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico declined to give further details about the lawsuit Wednesday.

After the refugee-sharing move was approved by EU ministers last week, Fico said Slovakia was not ready to accept the plan and was planning a legal complaint against it at an EU court in Luxembourg.

Slovakia voted against the plan along with the Czech Republic, Romania and Hungary.

September 30th, 2015
Foreign minister: Hungarian troops to help train Kurdish fighters against IS
By Hungary Matters

Hungarian troops serving in Kurdish-held northern Iraq will participate in training the Kurdish Peshmerga forces to fight the Islamic State (IS) terrorist group, Foreign Minister Péter Szijjártó said. The minister spoke following the UN summit on combatting IS militants in New York City. The Hungarian delegation at the summit was led by Prime Minister Viktor Orbán. “Unfortunately the Islamic State is conquering more and more territories, more and more people are forced to leave their homes because of their atrocities. Therefore if we truly intend to ease the migration pressure on Europe, then we must step up our efforts against the Islamic State,” Szijjártó said.

“Hungary is prepared to do so, and so our contingent of 110 soldiers, who are already in Kurdistan, will from now on take part in training Kurdish Peshmerga fighters alongside their security and protection tasks,” he said. In July this year, 100 Hungarian soldiers joined officers already stationed in Iraq and took over from peace-keepers working in the region.

Socialists step up pressure on Fico and Orbán

Political groups in the European Parliament try to keep members in line on migration.

By Maïa de La Baume

9/30/15, 6:50 PM CET

Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico will travel to Strasbourg next week to defend his recent statements on EU migration policy at a meeting of socialists in the European Parliament, who say they will push to have him expelled from the party if they aren’t satisfied with his explanation.

Gianni Pittella, president of the Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats in the Parliament, said Wednesday that Fico would be expected to “make a few clarifications” on his recent statements, including on refugees.

“I am happy to hear him defend his positions,” Pittella said in an telephone interview.

These include Fico’s claim that his country was “built for Slovaks, not for minorities.” Fico also said he would take the EU to court over the decision by member states earlier this month to relocate 120,000 refugees across Europe — an action taken over the objections of Slovakia and three other countries.

“If Fico doesn’t change his positions, the group will maintain its call to evict him,” Pittella said.

Pittella also called on the center-right European People’s Party group to expel Hungarian leader Viktor Orbán for his actions in response to the refugee crisis.

“I am asking the leaders of the group, Manfred Weber and Joseph Daul: Are Orbán’s actions compatible with values of Christianity and solidarity?” Pittella said.

The EPP, the European Parliament’s biggest political group, includes 12 members from Orbán’s Fidesz’s party. But the group is divided over how to deal with the uncompromising positions taken recently by the Hungarian leader.

Some EPP members, such as Viviane Reding, said they want to punish what they consider the authoritarian policies of Orbán, while others in the party defend him for advocating stronger border patrols.

“We are continuing our discussions with Hungarian MEPs,” said a parliament official, who added that some members of Fidesz had explained the position of the Hungarian government on migration at an EPP group meeting Wednesday.

Pittella said his new call was intended to put additional pressure on the EPP, in order to clarify what it wants to do with its Fidesz members. The S&D group is also hoping to differentiate itself from the EPP on this issue by showing a willingness to discipline one of its own.

Pittella said it was “unjustifiable” that Orbán’s government had built a fence along Hungary’s border with Serbia to block the flow of migrants, and claimed that the country’s treatment of refugees has been “inhumane.”

The socialists’ decision on whether to expel Fico will be taken at the presidency level of the Party of European Socialists (PES), an umbrella group of socialist political parties. The PES is expected to have “a discussion” on Fico’s hardline positions on October 9, a party spokeswoman said.

In a statement issued last week, Fico said the efforts to kick him out of the party were “nonsense.”

“The motion is tabled by a person hailing from the country that has flagrantly violated the Schengen rules. Maybe that’s where the nervousness stems from,” he said.

Hungary, ‘canary in the coal mine’ of EU press

A report calls Hungary the “most egregious practitioner of controlled press.”

By Ginger Hervey

9/29/15, 6:27 PM CET

Press freedom in Europe — and specifically, Hungary — is in danger, according to a report released Tuesday by the Committee to Protect Journalists.

The report states that while the EU maintains an outward commitment to press freedom, safeguards implemented are often cosmetic and offenders are seldom punished.

Case in point, according to the report and to CPJ members, is Viktor Orbán’s Hungary.

Since Orbán’s nationalist Fidesz party took power in 2010, it has been accused by activists and journalists of meddling in newsrooms, imposing taxes and regulations unfairly on media outlets critical of the government, and taking control of the Media Council, which is supposedly independently elected.

According to Kati Marton, a Hungarian-American board member of the CPJ, Orbán’s Hungary is the “most egregious practitioner of controlled press.”

“They are making it virtually impossible for journalists to do their job,” Marton said.

The Hungarian government’s practices have not escaped the notice of the European Commission, which has twice raised the possibility of sanctioning Budapest via Article 7, a clause in the treaty that could suspend a member state’s voting rights at the Commission if it is found in “serious and persistent breach” of treaty principles.

The CPJ said in their report, which was presented in Brussels Tuesday, that Article 7 should be reconsidered in Hungary’s case. Press freedom is the “canary in the coal mine,” according to Marton.

“This is about more than the press,” said Marton, an author, journalist and the widow of former U.S. diplomat Richard Holbrooke. “When a country starts rolling back press freedoms, it never stops there.”

When asked to comment on the CPJ report, the Hungarian Permanent Representation to the EU referred POLITICO to the Venice Commission’s Opinion on Media Legislation of Hungary.

The opinion, released in June, said that while the country had made progress in recent years, it needs to continue to improve the situation of media freedom in the country.

Jean-Paul Marthoz, the Belgian journalist and activist who penned the CPJ report, warned that Hungary’s suppression of the free press was a threat to Europe’s democratic values.

“Hungary is the first ideological attempt to undo the liberal construct of Europe,” said Marthoz. “Orbán has said very clearly that he is against liberal democracy, that his models are Erdoğan or Putin.”

The CPJ made a series of recommendations to EU leaders that would increase accountability among member states, including more openness in negotiations and the creation of a commission that could monitor member states’ compliance to human rights standards. Marthoz told POLITICO he believed a system with this aim could be created within six months, if key leaders cooperate.

Volunteers are closing down a tent camp in Brussels where they have hosted hundreds of migrants seeking shelter in the European Union and say Belgian authorities need to take over their task.

The camp was set up over a month ago and was used by hundreds of people from war-torn nations like Syria and Iraq who were seeking asylum in Belgium. Vanessa Van Strijthem, an organizer at the camp, said that the volunteers would still have an office nearby where refugees could come for help during the day, but would need to refer them to bunk beds the government has set up in an office tower.

"We're going to keep on fighting but we are only citizens. We need the government to take its responsibility," she said.

Czech Prime Minister Bohuslav Sobotka says his country is opposing any large European Union plan for a permanent compulsory redistribution of asylum-seekers among the bloc's 28 nations.

During a debate on the migrant crisis in the lower house of Parliament on Thursday, Sobotka said: "We're in the middle of a battle over a realistic approach of the entire European Union to the migrant crisis. The Czech Republic will vote against such a proposal. No government would be able to change such a mechanism in the future."

Last week, EU ministers agreed to redistribute 120,000 asylum-seekers in EU member states despite opposition from the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary and Romania.

Slovakia is planning to challenge that. Sobotka said the EU decision was bad but the Czechs would respect it.

Interior Minister Milan Chovanec said Thursday EU ministers will discuss the larger plan for the permanent redistribution of the migrants at their Oct. 8 meeting in Luxembourg.

October 1st, 2015
Orbán addresses migration in UN General Assembly
By Hungary Matters


Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán said finding a solution to the current migration crisis has proven difficult because of a lack of consensus on “the nature of the challenge.” Addressing the United Nation’s General Assembly in New York, Orbán said the crisis was not a “refugee crisis”, but a “mass migratory movement” of economic migrants, refugees, asylum-seekers and also “foreign fighters”. Orbán said while estimates of the size of the migrant movements were in a vast range, it was clear that Europe cannot carry the burden alone and would soon “destabilise” unless there was participation at a global level. Orbán called for negotiations with “all major stakeholders of international politics” on a “global quota system” which would distribute migrants to all countries.
Orbán said Hungary felt compassion for people forced to leave their homes and saw them as victims of poor governance and human trafficking. “It is our moral responsibility to give back these people their homes and their country,” he said, adding that migrants shouldn’t be given “a new European life,” but helped to return home. Orbán said that Christians reject anti-Muslim policy and sentiment and stressed that the Muslim faith was not responsible for the causes of migration.