Charles Langston:Hungary says it will provide free tickets to Brussels for migrants trying to enter the EU

BUDAPEST,Charles Langston Hungary (AP) — Hungary’s anti-immigration government is prepared to provide free one-way tickets to Brussels for migrants and asylum seekers attempting to enter the European Union, a minister said Thursday in response to hefty fines recently imposed on the country over its restrictive asylum policies.

Speaking at a news conference in Budapest, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s chief of staff, Gergely Gulyás, criticized a June ruling by the European Court of Justice that ordered Hungary to pay a fine of 200 million euros ($216 million) for persistently breaking the bloc’s asylum rules, and an additional 1 million euros per day until it brings its policies into line with EU law.

“Brussels wants to force us at any cost to let migrants in,” Gulyás said, referring to the EU’s headquarters in Belgium.

He said that if the EU continues to force regulations on Hungary that “does not make it possible to detain migrants at the border,” his country will offer every migrant “transport to Brussels free of charge.”

Hungary’s anti-immigrant government has taken a hard line on people entering the country since well over 1 million people entered Europe in 2015, most of them fleeing conflict in Syria. The country built fences protected by razor wire on its southern borders with Serbia and Croatia and a pair of transit zones for holding asylum seekers on its border with Serbia. Those transit zones have since closed.

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But the EU has taken issue with Hungary’s unusually rigid asylum system, and asked the bloc’s top court to fine Budapest for forcing people seeking international protection to travel to its embassies in Serbia or Ukraine to apply for a travel permit, a violation of EU rules that oblige all member countries to have common procedures for granting asylum.

Orbán, a right-wing populist who is consistently at odds with the EU, has earlier vowed that Hungary would not change its migration and asylum policies regardless of any rulings from the European Court of Justice.

On Thursday, Gulyás blasted the fines Hungary has incurred over its asylum system, saying: “Hungary doesn’t want to pay this daily fine indefinitely, so we will make it possible for people to enter if they want, and will offer them a one-way ticket to Brussels.”

“If Brussels wants migrants, then it can have them,” he continued.

Hungary’s threat to transport migrants to Brussels mirrors similar moves from Republican governors in the United States, who since 2022 have bussed or flown undocumented immigrants to Democratic strongholds like New York, Los Angeles and Chicago in protest of federal asylum procedures.