Hungary’s anti-immigration government plans to offer free one-way tickets to Brussels for migrants and asylum-seekers attempting to enter the European Union, a minister announced Thursday.
This move comes in response to substantial fines recently imposed on the country for its restrictive asylum policies.
At a news conference in Budapest, Gergely Gulyas, chief of staff to Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, condemned a June ruling by the European Court of Justice.
The court had fined Hungary for repeatedly violating EU asylum rules, with additional penalties of 1 million euros per day until the country aligns its policies with EU law.
“Brussels wants to force us at any cost to let migrants in,” Gulyas said, referring to the EU's headquarters in Belgium.
He said that if the EU continues to impose regulations on Hungary that “do not allow us to detain migrants at the border,” his country will offer every migrant “transport to Brussels free of charge.”
Hungary’s government has taken a hard line on immigration since more than 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 established transit zones for holding asylum seekers on its border with Serbia. Those transit zones have since closed.
But the EU has criticized Hungary's rigid asylum system and asked the bloc's top court to fine Budapest for requiring people seeking international protection to apply for a travel permit – a violation of EU rules that mandate common procedures for granting asylum.
Orban, a right-wing populist who is often at odds with the EU, has previously vowed that Hungary would defy any rulings from the European Court of Justice.
On Thursday, Gulyas criticized 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 by Republican governors in the United States, who since 2022 have sent migrants to Democratic strongholds like New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago in protest of federal asylum procedures.
