Hungary Signals It’s Serious About Sending Buses of Asylum Seekers to EU Headquarters

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 {snip}

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