Hungary’s defence minister has resigned because the armed forces were being too slow in building a border fence to keep out thousands of refugees and migrants heading into the country.
The resignation came as police used pepper spray on migrants who had broken out of a reception centre on Hungary’s southern border, highlighting the difficulty of stemming the tide of refugees fleeing conflict in the Middle East.
The armed forces, for whom Hende Csaba bore ultimate responsibility as defence minister, were involved in the construction of a fence along Hungary’s border with Serbia designed to prevent migrants from entering the country illegally.
A government source said right-wing prime minister Viktor Orban was not satisfied with the speed at which the border protections were being constructed.
“The government’s national security cabinet met on Monday to look at the situation regarding illegal immigration,” the government said in a statement.
“The cabinet heard an account of the state of readiness of the temporary security fence at the border. The minister offered his resignation after the meeting,” the statement ran.
Mr Orban offered the job to Istvan Simicsko, a member of his Fidesz-Christian Democrat party alliance and a former state secretary in the defence ministry.
A group of about 300 migrants broke through a cordon around a reception camp at Roszke, on Hungary’s border with Serbia, and set off down the wrong side of the motorway towards the capital Budapest, witnesses said.
Police, who had been escorting the migrants to a transit camp for fingerprinting and processing on their entry into the European Union’s passport-free Schengen zone, were unable to prevent their escape, despite using pepper spray.
Migrants had scuffled with police, another witness said.
Resettlement
Britain is to resettle up to 20,000 refugees from Syria over the next four and a half years, prime minister David Cameron has announced.
Mr Cameron told the House of Commons that the UK would live up to its moral responsibility towards the people forced from their homes by the forces of president Bashar Assad and the Islamic State terror group.
Ireland is expected to accept as many as 5,000 refugees, according to Tánaiste Joan Burton. However, no Government argreement has been reached on that figure.
“I would have thought in the case of Ireland we would be talking, over a period of time, up to 5,000 people,” Ms Burton told RTÉ radio on Monday afternoon.
The European Union executive is preparing for a new clash over refugees with national governments, especially in eastern Europe, after officials gave details of how many it would ask each of them to accommodate.
The European Commission will propose national quotas to relocate 160,000 asylum-seekers arriving in Greece, Hungary and Italy, with Germany taking in more than 40,000 and France nearly 31,000.
The plan will be set out on Wednesday by EU commission president, Jean-Claude Juncker. Countries that do not want to take part would be able to make financial contributions to buy their way out of the obligation on a temporary basis.
The plan would be the biggest move yet on the part of the EU as a whole to tackle a crisis that has seen hundreds of thousands of refugees and economic migrant arrive on its southern shores and eastern borders.
While Berlin and Paris have thrown their weight behind the quota scheme to oblige states to take in people to process their claims for refugee status, poorer eastern countries have made clear they oppose such schemes.
A proposal in May to relocate 40,000 people was blocked by national leaders, and their efforts to reach the target by voluntary pledges fell short.
German chancellor Angela Merkel said that all EU countries can help to accommodate the tide of migrants from the Middle East and Africa.
Ms Merkel told reporters in Berlin that Germany will ensure that those who need protection receive it, but that those who stand no chance of getting asylum will have to return to their homes swiftly.
Germany is preparing to receive by far the largest number of immigrants, but Ms Merkel called for help from EU partners.
“Germany is a country willing to take people in, but refugees can be received in all countries of the European Union in such a way that they can find refuge from civil war and from persecution,” she said.
System questioned
However, Mr Orban said he was not prepared to pitch in and questioned how any EU quota system for migrants could work.
Even as calm returned to the main border point between Austria and Hungary, after more than 14,000 people used it over the weekend to enter Austria, Hungary’s leader hit back at EU counterparts who blamed his country for the chaos.
Mr Orban criticised the European Union’s efforts to distribute migrants through a quota system and compared Hungary to a “black sheep” representing a voice of reason in the EU flock of countries.
Mr Orban said that any EU migrant quota among the bloc’s 28 countries, makes no sense in a system where the free movement of people would make it impossible to enforce.
“We represent the position of what the Americans call ‘first things first’,” Mr Orban told a meeting of Hungarian ambassadors in Budapest.
“As long as we are unable to defend Europe’s external borders, it makes no sense to talk about the fate of the immigrants.”
Austria's chancellor Werner Faymann and other EU leaders have blamed Mr Orban for the chaos they say left Austria and Germany with no choice but to essentially open their borders for thousands of migrants and refugees who complained of neglect and human rights violations in Hungary.
Most of those crossing into Austria over the weekend proceeded by train to Germany.
Austrian officials said that only about 90 people asked for asylum in Austria.
Further south, tensions were high in Macedonia at the border with Greece, where scuffles broke out between police and thousands of people attempting to head north toward the European Union.
About 2,000 people had gathered at the Greek border near the village of Idomeni just after dawn, attempting to cross into Macedonia.
Reuters