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Hungary asks Germany to clarify position vis-a-vis refugees

Xinhua, August 31, 2015 Adjust font size:

The Hungarian government is asking Germany to clarify its legal position regarding travel within the European Union (EU), Andras Giro-Szasz, the Hungarian government's state secretary in charge of communications told local wire service MTI on Monday.

Giro-Szasz said that recent, increasingly aggressive, disturbances around Budapest's Eastern (Keleti) Railway Station had been triggered in part by rumors that Germany was relaxing EU regulations regarding travel within the region. The EU specifies that travelers from the outside must have valid travel documents and visas from their target country.

While the Hungarian authorities have been doing their best to adhere to the rules and prevent undocumented refugees from boarding trains, many refugees believe that Germany has taken a far more lenient attitude towards Syrians.

Hungary has therefore specifically asked Germany to clarify its position, Giro-Szasz said.

Meanwhile Germany's government spokesman Steffen Seibert used Twitter to deny that Germany was sending charter trains to Budapest to pick up refugees.

"EU laws call for Hungary to register all refugees and for them to apply for asylum in Hungary," Seibert said, saying he had no knowledge of any charter trains.

At the same time, a lead researcher at the Institute for Foreign Affairs and Trade urgently called for a revamping of the entire set of regulations governing refugees, known as the Dublin system.

Agnes Angyal said that the EU's system had not been designed to manage a refugee inflow of this magnitude, which was putting exceptional pressure on border countries, mainly on Italy, Greece, and Hungary.

She also criticized EU regulations for inconsistency, with some countries considering Serbia safe and others qualifying it as unsafe in line with United Nations and Amnesty International opinion.

On his part, Hungarian Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade Peter Szijjarto has chosen to negotiate a joint position among the four Visegrad countries, including Slovakia, the Czech Republic, Poland, and Hungary, at least.

According to MTI, Szijjarto consulted by phone with his Slovak counterpart Miroslav Lajcak and both agreed that establishing quotas for accepting refugees was not a viable idea.

A European strategy needs to be able to put a halt to this migration wave, in which over 150,000 refugees had been apprehended after entering Hungary since the start of the year, said a foreign ministry briefing. Endit