Orbán: Hungary supports Serbia’s EU integration

Following talks with Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic and Austrian Chancellor Karl Nehammer, Orbán said Serbia’s EU membership was in the interests of Europe, adding the community “could fight migration a lot more easily were Serbia inside the EU already”.

Until Serbia becomes an EU member, “there can be only one goal: to shift the lines of defence further south and to create joint border defence with Serbia and Austria,” he said. Hungary stands ready to provide personnel and equipment, he added.

Orbán said “the problem that we call migration will be with us for the long run,” and he called for long-term and cooperation.

‘We want peace and ceasefire’ in Ukraine

Orbán called for a ceasefire in Ukraine “to avert imminent danger”. “We want peace and a ceasefire,” the prime minister told a joint press conference with Vucic and Nehammer.

Referring to the missile incident in which two people died in Poland on Tuesday, Orbán said “it is important to express our sympathy and to be aware that since there is war in the neighbourhood, we are in danger”.

“We are in danger in an economic sense, too,” Orbán said, referring to an outage of oil supplies to Hungary via the Druzhba pipeline on Tuesday.

“When your citizens and your economy are in danger, you must singularly focus on averting that danger, and this can only be achieved through a ceasefire,” he said.