Hungary has ratcheted up tensions with the European Union as a long-running row over migrants took another twist.
A minister for Viktor Orban’s government has warned the EU that the country will send migrants to Brussels if the bloc continues to demand that it accepts more asylum-seekers.
Gergely Gulyás was defiant during a press conference on Thursday, telling reporters: “Brussels wants to force us to let migrants in at all costs.”
He offered Hungary’s solution to the demand from Brussels: “After the asylum procedure, we will offer all migrants at the Hungarian border the opportunity to be transported to Brussels voluntarily and free of charge.
“If Brussels wants migrants, they will get them. We will give everyone a one-way ticket if the EU makes it impossible to stop migration at the external border.”
Mr Gulyás added that asylum seekers “can then negotiate there with the European Commission about their own care”.
The move is a retaliation from Hungary after the EU’s top court slapped Budapest with €200 million (£170 million) fine for repeatedly flouting asylum rules in June.
Hungary was also ordered to pay an additional €1m (£850,000) for each day it fails to comply with the court’s ruling.
However, Hungary has refused to back down. At the time, Mr Orban vowed to “hurt Brussels” and described the court decision as “outrageous and unacceptable”.
He complained that “illegal migrants are more important to the Brussels bureaucrats than their own European citizens”.
Hungary, ruled for years by Mr Orbán’s right-wing Fidesz party, has taken a hard line on asylum-seekers entering the country.
In 2020, a row erupted between the two sides when the European Court of Justice (ECJ) ruled that Budapest failed to comply with the EU’s rules on the treatment of migrants. It accused Hungary of “unlawfully detaining” asylum-seekers and deporting them before they could appeal the rejection of their applications.
In June this year, the court slammed Mr Orban’s refusal to abide by the 2020 ruling as an “unprecedented and exceptionally serious breach of EU law”.
Hungary, which shares a border with Serbia and Ukraine, two non-EU and non-Schengen members, has complained that it does not receive any additional resources to protect the external border of the EU.
Mr Gulyás’ proposal of offering migrants a one-way ticket to Brussels appears to take a leaf from the Republican Party playbook in the US.
In 2022, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis sparked controversy after sending 50 migrants on a flight to the leafy liberal Martha’s Vineyard in Massachusetts. Governor DeSantis said he had arranged the flights to expose “liberal hypocrisy”.
Other Republican leaders such as Texas Governor Greg Abbott, have also sent buses of migrants to Democrat-voting US cities.
