Hungary’s prime minister, Viktor Orbán, has claimed
Europe is in the grip of madness over immigration and refugees, and argued that he was defending European Christianity against a Muslim influx.
Orbán’s strong remarks came as he arrived in Brussels for a confrontation with EU leaders over his popular policies in Europe’s biggest migration emergency since the second world war.
“Everything which is now taking place before our eyes threatens to have explosive consequences for the whole of Europe,” Orbán wrote in Germany’s Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. “Europe’s response is madness. We must acknowledge that the European Union’s misguided immigration policy is responsible for this situation.
“Irresponsibility is the mark of every European politician who holds out the promise of a better life to immigrants and encourages them to leave everything behind and risk their lives in setting out for Europe. If Europe does not return to the path of common sense, it will find itself laid low in a battle for its fate.” Germany, France, and Italy are demanding an overhaul of European asylum procedures. Attempts to get to grips with the crisis have left the EU floundering and the Schengen passport-free travel zone across 26 countries threatening to unravel.
“Today everything is immigration,” said the EU president, Donald Tusk, on Thursday. “We live in sobering, shocking times.”
“The Schengen treaty is under threat, that’s absolutely clear,” said Martin Schulz, the European parliament speaker, after meeting Orbán. “This is a crucial moment for the
European Union. A deeper split of the union is a risk we cannot exclude.” As confusion over border controls and free movement deepen, there were
chaotic scenes at Budapest’s Keleti railway station when the Hungarian authorities’ on-off approach to running the trains shifted. Thousands of people scrambled to board trains hoping they were heading for Germany after authorities restarted rail traffic a day after closing the station to refugees. “This is not a European problem, it’s a German problem,” said Orbán in Brussels. “They all want to go to Germany.”