Budapest is seeking reimbursement for expenditures incurred on border security to counter illegal immigration, according to a senior official.
Hungary might initiate legal proceedings against the European Commission to secure compensation for its border protection spending during the recent migrant influx, as stated by the head of Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s office on Thursday.
In a statement to reporters, Gergely Gulyas maintained that Budapest would not be compelled to accept migrants, adding that individuals granted political asylum under EU regulations would be offered a “free one-way trip to Brussels.” Hungary closed its southern border to asylum seekers in 2015 during the peak of the migration crisis.
“We are prepared to sue the European Commission after it had partially or fully reimbursed costs incurred by other member states protecting the Schengen border,” he stated, as cited by Reuters.
Gulyas was alluding to Germany’s recent decision this month to tighten border controls in an attempt to curb the threat of Islamist extremism and address irregular migration. The official raised concerns about this move, suggesting that “Germany would dismantle Schengen” while predicting a significant impact on the EU economy.
“The government made the same assertion ten years ago: ‘If we fail to safeguard the external borders, the internal borders will be reintroduced.’ Now we witness the erosion of Schengen’s internal, border-free area, and we find ourselves living among borders once more, a scenario nobody desired.”
Gulyas also highlighted that Hungary had invested €2 billion ($2.2 billion) “on protecting the Schengen border in recent years without receiving any substantial contribution from the EU.”
Hungary has consistently clashed with the EU over migration, refusing to endorse bloc-wide resettlement quotas. In June, the European Court of Justice imposed a €200 million ($220 million) fine on Budapest for failing to comply with the bloc’s asylum regulations, along with an additional penalty of €1 million for each day of non-compliance.
Orban characterized the ruling as “outrageous and unacceptable,” while Budapest officials threatened to dispatch buses filled with migrants to Brussels. In response, the EU asserted it would employ “all powers” to prevent Hungary from taking such action.
The EU has been grappling with a migration crisis since at least 2015, primarily attributed to unrest in the Middle East and Africa, and subsequently by the Ukraine conflict. According to the EU Commission, there were 385,445 irregular border crossings in 2023, representing an 18% increase from 2022.