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The leaders of Hungary, Poland and the Czech Republic, who take a strong anti-immigration stance, have been negotiating with top European Union officials in an attempt by the bloc to reform asylum rules five years after the continent’s migration crisis.
The European Commission, the bloc’s main executive body, announced on Wednesday new plans for stricter border controls and a simplified removal procedure for rejected asylum seekers.
However, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban said these measures were not enough and emphasized that refugees should be screened in camps outside Europe.
“There is not a breakthrough, there are a lot of changes, but it is not a breakthrough yet,” Orban told reporters in Brussels after speaking in Brussels with Czech and Polish colleagues and EC President Ursula von der Leyen.
These three countries, along with Slovakia, form the so-called Visegrad Group, which has strongly opposed previous efforts by the EU to distribute refugees under a mandatory quota system.
“A breakthrough would mean external hotspots so that no one can enter the territory of the European Union without permission,” Orban said, referring to the proposal to establish inspection centers outside Europe.
Orban added that the tone of the EC’s latest “proposal” was closer to his heart, but claimed that “the basic approach has not changed.”
“They want to manage migration and not stop migrants,” said the Hungarian prime minister.
“Hungary’s position is this: let’s stop migrants. They are two different things,” he said.
The EU’s plan to reform the so-called Dublin Asylum Seekers Regulation, which van der Leyen himself acknowledged failed, came two weeks after a fire on the Greek island of Lesbos destroyed an overcrowded immigrant camp. and bring the issue to the fore.
Under this plan, EU countries that do not want to accept more migrants could take responsibility for returning rejected asylum seekers to their countries of origin.
Czech Prime Minister Andrei Babish called the idea that states that do not want to accept immigrants should guarantee their repatriation “the greatest nonsense.”
“At first glance, it seems that the European Commission still does not understand that to prevent illegal migration, we must prevent illegal immigrants from entering European territory,” Babišas said.
His Polish counterpart Mateusz Morawiecki, for his part, said that the Visegrad Group will not abandon its demand for “the strictest and most effective border control policy possible.”
“We want to prevent problems at the source, rather than then address the huge and controversial immigration policy proposals that we had in 2016, 2017 and 2018,” he said.
After meeting with the three leaders, U. von der Leyen wrote on Twitter that they had all “had a good discussion” and “agreed to work closely.”
The EU’s plans have also disappointed those who take the opposite point of view in this debate: defenders of migrant rights have condemned initiatives to incite xenophobia and populism.
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