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Hungarian PM calls constitutional amendment as"national" issue

Xinhua, October 28, 2016 Adjust font size:

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban said a proposed amendment to the Hungarian constitution aimed at halting a European Union move to distribute asylum seekers among the EU countries was a "national" issue and had nothing to do with political parties or economics, when speaking on public radio Kossuth on Friday.

Orban pointed to a referendum in which 98 percent of voters had rejected the mandatory resettlement of refugees in Hungary but which was rendered invalid because of a low turnout.

Hungary requires a two-thirds parliamentary majority to enact a constitutional amendment but Orban's administration is several votes short of the two-thirds.

The far right opposition Jobbik party has said it would support the amendment, if the government terminated a scheme allowing anyone who invested 300,000 euros in Hungarian residency bonds to receive permanent residence.

Orban rejected the Jobbik proposal out of hand but acknowledged that Hungary's financial situation was so much improved that it could consider repealing the 2012 legislation.

His government would move ahead with its proposal for a constitutional amendment, he said, but passing it would depend on the opposition. The left has rejected the proposed amendment.

Orban pointed to the inconclusive outcome to a European Union summit last week regarding the mandatory quotas, said the issue would have to be revisited in December, but threatened to sue the European Commission, the executive body of the EU, unless it dropped the quota issue.

"That's why we need the constitutional amendment," he said.

Asked about Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi's threat to veto the EU budget, which would cut off funds for Hungary unless the Central European countries helped in relocating the migrants, Orban said that if Italy had adhered to the Schengen agreement on outer EU borders, the problem would have been nonexistent.

However, he also noted that Europe had not been giving Italy the help it needed.

Orban objected to Hungary being labeled "uncooperative," calling it unfair since Hungarian fences to keep out the migrants were protecting the rest of the EU. Endit