It is time for the European Commission to fund border protection!

The European Parliament has put the debate on the migration crisis along the Polish-Belarusian border on the agenda of its plenary session under urgency procedure. In the debate, MEP Kinga Gál, President of the Fidesz delegation to the European Parliament stressed that the effective protection of external borders should finally be recognised as an indisputable expression of European solidarity and that the European Commission should therefore provide financial support, including for border barriers, as soon as possible.

MEP Kinga Gál condemned the use of migration as a threat by Belarus and assured Poland of the Fidesz delegation’s full solidarity. “It is time for the European Commission to do the same immediately, beyond mere words, by actively helping and financing the border protection of Member States.”

The MEP pointed out that there is a serious migration and security crisis on the Polish-Belarusian border. “The new migration crisis, which threatens to be even more disastrous than the one in 2015, supports the Hungarian position, which has been expressed for years, that the protection of the EU’s external borders must finally become a priority. Migrants must not be distributed, migration must not be managed with the help of agencies, and mass illegal migration must be stopped at the external borders. Hungary has shown that this is possible. We have already spent HUF 590 billion of our own national budget on border protection.”

The Fidesz MEP explained that “the European Commission recently replied to an official request on the fence under construction on the Greek-Turkish border that although EU funding supports Member States in their border management, the construction or maintenance of fences or barriers at the EU’s external borders has never received support from the EU budget. Yet this border protection must finally be recognised as an indisputable expression of European solidarity”.

“It is time for the Commission to realize this and provide swift financial support to the efforts of the Member States concerned. Enough talk, there is no time for technical discussions. This is the only way to safeguard our security”, MEP Kinga Gál warned.