By Libya Herald reporters.
Tripoli, 24 September 2016:
Libyan territory should be used by the EU to set up a giant refugee city, Hungarian premier Viktor Orban said today.
Orban made his suggestion in Vienna at the end of a European summit on the EU’s refugee crisis. The Balkan migrant route into Europe has been disrupted since last year when Orban ordered Hungary’s borders closed and fenced with razor wire.
Orban said today that migrants were able to set sail from Libya because the Libyan authorities had no controls. He said that the EU needed a new Libya policy. Libyan unity should be preserved, he explained, by setting up a new government with whom the EU would sign a cooperation agreement on migrants.
“Unless we preserve Libya as one and stabilise it we cannot create the gigantic refugee city by Libya’s Mediterranean coast,” he said.
Orban said that the EU needed total control of its borders. The refugee city he was proposing in Libya would be used to house would-be migrants while their EU entry applications were being processed.
Orban has in the past argued that all illegal migrants in Europe should be rounded up and deported.
Last year Hungary’s borders with its southern neighbours, Romania, Serbia and Croatia were shut down.
Orban’s government has incensed fellow EU members by hustling migrants though the country and refusing to take back any. Under the Dublin Accord migrants are supposed to claim asylum in the first EU country they enter. Thus all migrants crossing from non-EU member Serbia should have had their asylum requests considered in Hungary.
Orban has called a referendum for 2 October which invites voters to reject the EU’s plans to dictate how many migrants individual member states should accept.
