Hungary Prepares for Spike in Influx of Political Refugees From Ukraine

Hungary has witnessed an increase in the influx of migrants from Ukraine since the start of the conflict in the country's southeast with a further increase expected, a Hungarian parliamentarian told Sputnik.

MOSCOW (Sputnik), Svetlana Alexandrova — Ukraine has been experiencing a humanitarian crisis since April 2014, when Kiev had launched a military offensive against independence supporters in the Donbass region. According to the United Nations, the total number of Ukrainian refugees seeking any form of legal stay in neighboring countries has reached 770,000.

"Due to the crisis in Ukraine, we have witnessed the increase in migrants, and we can expect, with further destabilization in Ukraine, even larger number of economic, political and social immigrants," Marton Gyongyosi, vice-chairman of Foreign Affairs Committee of the Hungarian National Assembly, said.

Gyongyosi's statements come after a European Commission's proposal to take in 20,000 refugees over the next two years, distributing them among EU member states.

The quotas for refugee intake will be set depending on GDP, unemployment rate, the number of documented immigrants already residing in the country as well as its current official population.

"The increase in immigration to Hungary today, coupled with terrorism issues, became even larger than social or economic problems."

He also stressed that the "rise in immigration became a national security issue that Hungary is completely unprepared to tackle."

"Brussels' arguments regarding this quotas plan are very sly and sneaky," Gyongyosi said, highlighting that the number of Hungary-bound migrants this year increased twenty-fold since 2012.

"Hungary is facing the highest increase in immigration in Europe," the lawmaker added.

The EU is heading toward "extreme dictator centralization," as Brussels has taken the process of making decisions on refugee intake quotas into its own hands, a Hungarian parliamentarian told Sputnik.

"It is unfortunate to see that EU has been going in the direction of extreme dictator centralization as Brussels takes any decision-making process in its hands. This disastrous plan of national quotas was adopted as the old EU member-states want to spread the negative effects of extreme liberalism."

According to Gyongyosi, the quotas are "solely in the interests of the Central EU countries," such as the United Kingdom, Germany, France and the Scandinavian states, "that are now full of immigrants."

 

"Central and Western Europe, especially the United Kingdom, were heavily involved in the destabilization of countries like Libya, Egypt, Tunis, Iraq, Afghanistan and Syria; serving the geopolitical interests of the United States."

The politician called EU policy toward North Africa and the Middle East "short-sighted and disastrous," noting that North African countries used to serve as a buffer zone between Africa and Europe, absorbing potential migration spikes, prior to the Arab Spring uprisings in the beginning of 2010s.