Danish Left-Wing Minister: Hungary was Right on the Migration Debate
Robert Snapp
|
Denmark’s left-wing migration minister has admitted that the Hungarian government’s uncompromising border controls and hardline stance against unfettered mass migration were correct all along.
Following a meeting between E.U. ministers in Brussels earlier this week, Mattias Tesfaye, Denmark’s Minister of Immigration and Integration, told the press: “It was a mistake to criticize Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán for raising a barbed wire wall at the border in 2015.”
“As is well known, initially the majority of European leaders strongly criticized the establishment of the southern border lock, but now more and more people acknowledge that the Hungarian prime minister was right in the migration debate,” Tesfaye, a member of the Social Democrats, continued.
Tesfaye and interior ministers from various E.U. member states met on Tuesday to discuss challenges facing the bloc following the Taliban’s swift takeover of Afghanistan.
As a result of the takeover, the United Nations estimates that half a million Afghans will likely flee the country over the coming month, alone, and European ministers are looking to devise a plan to prevent them from reaching Europe.
For Tesfaye and other anti-mass migration politicians, the mistakes of 2015 and 2016, which resulted in well over one million migrants waltzing into Europe to claim “asylum”, should not be repeated.
“At the time, refugees were marching on Europe’s motorways and we were unable to protect our external borders, and aid organizations were short of money,” Tesfaye said, referring to the 2016 migrant crisis.
“We are believers in strong boundaries. Not just between Europe and neighboring countries, but on the borders of Eastern Turkey and Southern Tunisia. On the Danish side, we want to help these two countries strengthen their borders,” Tesfaye said.
Tesfaye and other ministers like Heiko Maas, Germany’s interior minister, have suggested E.U. member states provide Afghanistan’s neighbors with generous aid packages to help them handle large flows of migration, and so those flows do not reach Europe.
It remains to be seen, however, if throwing money at the problem will work.
One of Hungary’s top ministers, Judit Varga, was delighted to hear Tesfaye’s sympathetic words, saying that they’ve vindicated Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s long-held and heavily criticized position on migration.
This “proves that Hungary is a model state since what is desired and hoped for elsewhere is a reality here,” Varga wrote on social media in response to the Danish minister’s statement. “We are protecting Europe’s borders at the same time, taking aid to where it is most needed.”
Share: