Szijjarto meets C5 counterparts in Vienna

After meeting the foreign ministers of Austria, Czechia, Slovakia and Slovenia in Vienna on Wednesday, Peter Szijjarto told a joint press conference that central Europe was in the focal point of two crises, the war from the east and migration from the south.

“It’s very complicated to address such challenges … especially if we don’t get any kind of support, or we don’t get any funds that should be ours,” he said.

Migration pressure has grown on Hungary’s southern border, he said. “There is a totally new situation created by the fact that the smugglers and migrants are using automatic rifles.”

Western politicians’ calls for a scheme on the distribution of migrants inspire migration and strengthen migration pressure, he said. He invited those politicians to visit Hungary’s southern borders, and “see how unbearable the life of the people in the neighbourhood of the border is”.

The migration crisis can be solved only by applying international law, which says that asylum seekers have the right to stay in the first safe country they reach, he said. They are not allowed to “violate the borders of dozens of countries”, he said.

Consequently, the people trying to enter Hungary are not asylum seekers, having traversed several safe countries, he said.

“So we hope that in the future, everybody, including our colleagues in Brussels and Berlin, will respect international law, and we hope that everybody will in the future refrain from statements increasing migration pressure on our southern borders,” Szijjarto said.