STRASBOURG (Sputnik) – Kover noted at the European Conference of Presidents of Parliaments in Strasbourg that every country should decide whether it needs migrants or not.
"Countries that decide to accept refugees on their territory should not try redistributing these migrants by applying pressure, which is, in fact, equivalent to applying force…Every country should decide whether it stands to gain or to lose from migration," Kover said.
In September 2015, the European Commission announced a quota scheme for each EU member state depending on its size, population and social and economic indicators, providing for the resettlement of 160,000 refugees throughout EU countries over the next two years. Hungary is expected to accept at least 1,294 asylum seekers within the framework of the quota system.
On October 2, Hungary is due to hold a government-backed referendum seeking popular support for turning down any future EU plan to redistribute migrants among member states.
Europe has been beset by a massive refugee crisis, with hundreds of thousands of undocumented migrants fleeing crisis-torn countries in the Middle East and North Africa to escape violence and poverty. The EU border agency Frontex detected over 1.83 million illegal border crossings in 2015, in contrast to some 283,000 in 2014.
Budapest has been constantly criticized by some EU members as well as by human rights groups for its tough stance on migrants.
