Hungary asks EU to help pay for anti-migrant border fence

Pablo Gorondi Hungary’s prime minister has asked the European Union to pay for half of the cost of anti-migrant fences it built on its southern borders, or about 440 million euros ($523 million).

In a letter dated Thursday to European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker, Prime Minister Viktor Orban said the fences erected in 2015 on the borders with Serbia and Croatia have practically eliminated the migrant flow through Hungary, guarding more than just his country.

The move comes days before Europe’s top court is expected to reject an appeal by Hungary and Slovakia against an EU agreement obliging them to take in refugees from Greece and Italy.

“With the construction of the fence, training and placing 3,000 border hunters into active service, our country is protecting not only itself but entire Europe against the flood of illegal migrants,” Orban said in the letter. “I hope that, in the spirit of European sol- idarity, we can rightly expect that the European Commission ... will reimburse half of our extraordinary border protection expenses in the foreseeable future.”

But European Commission spokesman Alexander Winterstein encouraged Hungary to put in a formal application to use funds already earmarked in the 2014-2020 EU budget.

“We are not financing the construction of fences or barriers at external borders. We do support border management measures at external borders. This can be surveillance measures. This can be border control equipment. But fences, we do not finance,” Winterstein said Friday. “We won’t change” our stance on that.

As Orban and other government officials earlier made it a point of pride that Hungary had paid for nearly all the costs of the fences and their maintenance with local funds, the change of heart could also let Orban generate another conflict with the EU, should it reject the “reasonable” request for reimbursement.