Hungary signals it's serious about sending buses of asylum seekers to EU headquarters

BUDAPEST, Hungary — Hungary's anti-immigrant government signaled Friday that it is serious about implementing a plan to provide asylum seekers free one-way travel to Brussels, a measure meant to pressure the European Union into relenting on heavy fines against the country for its restrictive asylum policies.

At a news conference in the capital Budapest, State Secretary Bence Rétvári claimed the EU wanted to force Hungary to allow “illegal migrants” across its borders, and said the country would “offer these illegal migrants, voluntarily, free of charge, one-way travel to Brussels."

Backdropped by a row of passenger buses with illuminated signs reading “Röszke-Brussels” — a route that would take migrants from Hungary's southern border with Serbia to the EU headquarters in Belgium — Rétvári said the transport would be conducted “after the implementation of the European procedure,” but did not detail what status the asylum seekers would have upon being transported.

“If Brussels wants illegal migrants, Brussels can have them,” he said.

The provocative proposal to bus migrants to Brussels, which echoes similar moves taken earlier by right-wing Republican governors in the United States, comes in response to a June ruling by the European Court of Justice that ordered Hungary to pay a fine of 200 million euros ($216 million) for persistently breaking the bloc’s asylum rules, and an additional 1 million euros per day until it brings its policies into line with EU law.

The bloc takes issue with Budapest for forcing people seeking international protection to travel to Hungarian embassies in Serbia or Ukraine to apply for a travel permit, violating EU rules that oblige all member countries to have common procedures for granting asylum.

The government of nationalist Prime Minister Viktor Orbán has said it will file legal proceedings against the EU over the fines, and has demanded compensation for the billions it says it has spent on border protection including the construction of fences protected by razor wire on its southern borders with Serbia and Croatia.

Orbán, a consistent opponent of the EU on issues ranging from immigration to foreign policy to support for Ukraine, has cast his long-serving government as a defender of Europe's Christian culture, and has come under fire for comments saying Hungary did not want to become a “mixed race” nation.

The EU has frozen billions for his government over breaches of the bloc's rule-of-law and democracy standards, and some EU lawmakers have petitioned for Hungary to be stripped of its voting rights in the bloc's executive Commission.

Hungary's government missed the first September deadline for paying the 200-million euro fine ordered by the European Court of Justice, opening the way for potentially another conflict with the EU.