Hungary PM: to decide by Friday on Croatia border closure

Hungary will make a decision on Friday on a possible closure of its border with Croatia to stem the flow of migrants, Prime Minister Viktor Orban said in Brussels, public television M1 reported.

This could quickly come to a halt now as Hungary’s fence is finished on the Croatian border as well.

Hungary’s new razor-wire fence and national direction mark a sharp reversal for a country that played a historic role in crumbling of the Berlin Wall – by opening a border fence with Austria in 1989 that triggered a sudden exodus of East Germans to the West.

“Unfortunately, this decision has not been made”.

But he mad clear that as “a second option” he wants “first to talk with the Visegrad Group”, made up of Hungary, the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Poland “and European prime ministers on whether to close the Hungarian border with Croatia” for migrants. Sealing the border with Serbia had actually diverted tens of thousands of migrants which then had to travel up to Croatia. Migrants faced a similar difficulty in September when the Serbian border was closed off. “It would (be) precisely the identical”, he stated, including that there can be no “hall” for migrants in the direction of the west.

Hungary had created two so-referred to as transit zones on its border with Serbia, the place migrants can submit an asylum request, however most such requests are rejected, as a result of Hungary considers Serbia a protected nation for refugees. It has also clamped down on illegal crossings of the border fence, punishing migrants with expulsion in court.

Ahead of an European Union summit in Brussels, he said: “We need to grasp the problem at its source, meaning we need to go south and defend the Greek border”.

“If this is a statement we have to believe him, because he is the prime minister”, Szijjarto said.

The German leader added: “It’s quite obvious that only a few countries today take the majority of refugees and if these countries now are asked to secure the external borders on top of that, I don’t think it would be what we could call a fair distribution of effort”.