Hungary votes against migrant quotas
Prime minister vows to amend constitution after more than 98 per cent vote against quotas
Hungarians voted overwhelmingly yesterday to reject EU migrant quotas.
But the referendum was declared invalid because only 45 per cent of Hungary’s eight million voters turned out at the polling booths – falling short of the required 50 per cent.
Around 98 per cent of votes were against the EU’s plan for member states to take in a quota of migrants.
The poll, called by Right-wing prime minister Viktor Orban, urged Brussels to take note of the majority.
AN ATTEMPT by the Hungarian prime minister to strike a blow against Brussels faltered last night after his referendum on accepting EU migrant quotas was declared invalid because it failed to meet the turnout threshold.
More than 98 per cent of Hungarians voted No to the quotas in the referendum, but only 45 per cent of the eight million Hungarians registered to cast their vote did so, falling short of the required 50 per cent to make it legally valid.
Viktor Orban played down his failure to bring enough voters to the polls last night, insisting there would be “legal consequences” regardless of the outcome.
The referendum was the brainchild of the far-Right prime minister, who cast a No vote as a defence of the country’s sovereignty and independence.
He described the estimated 3.2 million No votes as an “outstanding” result and vowed to submit an amendment to Hungary’s constitution to reflect the will of the people.
His 18bn forints (£50m) No campaign focused heavily on the fact that Isil terrorists, such as those behind the Paris and Brussels attacks, posed as migrants in 2015 while returning from Syria along the so-called “Balkans route” of eastern European countries, including Hungary.
The country’s counter-terrorism centre revealed this week that Hungary became a “logistics hub” for jihadists in the months leading up to the November 13 massacre in Paris, which left 130 people dead and a further 368 injured. The “hub” was used to co-ordinate fighters from Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant who posed as refugees with fake passports as they returned from Syria, intelligence chiefs said.
Data analysts claimed last night that Hungary’s media also overwhelmingly backed the No vote, with 95 per cent of television broadcasts leading up to the referendum supporting the government’s position.
They also said that 91 per cent of TV coverage about migrants depicted them in a negative light.
Though the EU quotas would add only 1,924 migrants to Hungary’s population of 9.8m, the vote is seen as highly symbolic of a tidal wave of anti- refugee sentiment sweeping across Europe. Mr Orban maintains that parliament will pass legislation to advance the referendum’s goal despite the turnout. “Brussels cannot force its will on Hungary,” he said.
“The most important issue next week is for me to go to Brussels, hold negotiations and try with the help of this result – if the result is appropriate – achieve for it not to be mandatory to take in the kind of people in Hungary we don’t want to,” he said after casting his vote. “We are proud that we are the first,” he added. “Unfortunately we are the only ones in the European Union who managed to have a [referendum] on the migrant issue.”
Earlier this month, Mr Orban and his counterpart in Poland pledged to wage a “cultural counter-revolution” against Brussels in an effort to radically reform a post-Brexit EU.
The referendum asked voters: “Do you want the European Union to be able to prescribe the mandatory settlement of non-Hungarian citizens in Hungary even without the consent of Parliament?”
The decisive vote came as Sebastian Kurz, Austria’s foreign minister, said the European Union should drop its plan to distribute 160,000 refugees around the member states.