PRAGUE, Sept 13 (NNN-AGENCIES) — Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orban said he was optimistic that the new European Commission would improve ties with the EU’s eastern members, long strained by disagreements over migration and multi-culturalism.
The Visegrad Four group (V4) – Hungary, Poland, the Czech Republic and Slovakia – has often been at odds with outgoing Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker and his team, especially over how to manage migration into the bloc.
The eastern nations, which unlike their wealthier western peers have little experience of absorbing large numbers of immigrants, successfully resisted a Commission plan to distribute asylum seekers across EU member states.
“I am optimistic. The new commission, the behaviour of the new commission, the denomination of the new commission, all that will determine how successful the next five years will be,” Orban told a news conference after a meeting of the V4 prime ministers in Prague.
He accused the outgoing commission of pursuing policies based on “let’s let migrants in, let’s build multiculturalism”, adding that Hungary and its neighbours opposed this approach.
Orban, who has also repeatedly clashed with Brussels over his reforms of Hungary’s judiciary and the independence of media and academic institutions, said the new Commission must not try to “impose on us the things that our citizens do not want”.
“But if this process of imposing continues, we will be resistant,” said Orban, speaking through an interpreter. — NNN-AGENCIES
