Minister Machete accepted that Hungary had consistently drawn attention to its growing problems with illegal immigrants making their way up through the Balkans but that this solution proposed and implemented by Prime Minister Viktor Orban would not solve the issue.
“The wall does not resolve the problem. There will be a kickback in refugee flows that cannot cross the border and hence impacting on other countries,” said the foreign minister who also added that the remainder of member states had expressed their disapproval of the Hungarian option.
Machete said that any meaningful solution would have to be “radically different to those that are being considered for Greece and Italy” and based on solidarity between the member states.
The Hungarian authorities began building the wall along its 175 kilometre border with Serbia one week ago after receiving 78,190 immigrants this year of whom 77,600 had made their way from Serbia with the majority from Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria and Kosovo.