Four EU nations reject Germany’s refugee quota plan
Hungary, Czech Republic, Slovakia and Poland say they’ll crack down on borders
VIENNA— At least four countries Friday firmly rejected a European Union plan to impose refugee quotas to ease a worsening migrant crisis that Germany’s foreign minister said was “probably the biggest challenge” in the history of the 28-nation bloc.
Hungary, which along with the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Poland said it would not support the proposal, threatening instead to crack down on the thousands of people streaming across its borders daily as they flee war and persecution.
The stance by those Central European countries reflected a hardening front against distributing at least some of the refugees among them and was a stinging rebuff to German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier, who travelled to Prague to try to persuade them to reconsid- er. While the Czechs, Slovaks and Poles have been relatively unaffected by the influx, Hungary has faced growing criticism about its stance toward the asylum seekers. Other EU leaders and human rights groups accuse the government of gross mismanagement or serious negligence in housing, feeding and processing the migrants travelling from the Balkans and through Hungary to western Europe.
Peter Bouckaert of Human Rights Watch said Hungary was keeping migrants and refugees “in pens like animals, out in the sun without food and water.”
A video the rights group said was from inside a holding facility at the border town of Roszke showed metal fences surrounding clusters of tents and dividing migrants into groups. Guards were depicted throwing food into the air for desperate people to grab. Erno Simon, a spokesman in Hungary for the UN refugee agency, said the housing situation in Roszke, with nighttime temperatures falling to near freezing, “is really very, very alarming.”
Unfazed, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban threatened an even harder line, saying his country intended to catch, convict and imprison people who continue to penetrate its new border barriers as part of get-tough border security measures scheduled to begin Tuesday.
“If they don’t cross into Hungary territory legally, we will consider it a crime,” Orban said, saying the “illegal immigrants” had no one to blame but themselves for any hardships suffered.
“They don’t co-operate. They are not willing to go to the places where they receive provisions: food, water, shelter, health care. They have risen up against Hungary’s legal order,” he told a Budapest news conference.
Hungarian police already are overwhelmed with the influx and will probably not be able to mount an effective effort to jail those deemed to be entering illegally. Still, Orban’s comments will probably feed the trepidation some of the migrants already were expressing Friday even while still hundreds of kilometres away from Hungary.