Hungary vows to build a second fence to protect its borders from migrants

The Hungarian prime minister said Friday that his country is to build a stronger fence along its southern frontier in the event that the migration pact between Turkey and the European Union fails.
 
Hungary was looking into building a stronger defense system in addition to the one that was quickly put in place last year, Prime Minister Viktor Orban told Hungarian public radio.

The new fence would be built alongside the one that already exists, Orban said, as a preventative measure against "hundreds of thousands" of migrants arriving to the continent.

Orban did not say when construction of the new fence was to begin, nor when it would be finished.

Last year, some 400,000 refugees and migrants crossed Hungary on their way to Austria, Germany and Sweden, before the government ordered the construction of wire fences along the borders with Serbia and Croatia.

Budapest has refused to accept refugee quotas imposed on it by the EU.

• Hungary is to hold a referendum on the migrant quota in October, with the government urging citizens to vote "no" on the resettlement of non-Hungarian citizens by the EU without the approval of the National Assembly.

• Orban shares his stance on EU refugee quotas with other EU member nations in Eastern Europe, including Slovakia, the Czech Republic and Poland.

The prime ministers of these four countries _ which make up the Visegrad Four group _ met with German Chancellor Angela Merkel in Warsaw on Friday, whom they have critizised for her open-door migration policy.
EFE
26/8/16