Migrants board a bus at an open migrant camp in Vamosszabadi, Hungary on August 30, 2016. Picture taken on August 30, 2016.REUTERS/Laszlo Balogh
Austria's interior minister threatened on Wednesday to sue Hungary if it
refused to take back migrants who had crossed their shared border, as political
tensions mounted over
immigration before presidential elections.
Austria's government, facing a challenge from the far-right Freedom
Party, has repeatedly accused Hungary of letting migrants enter its territory
in the face of EU rules that asylum seekers must stay in the first country they
enter in the bloc.
Hungary, itself preparing for a referendum on whether to accept a
Europe-wide asylum quota, has insisted that most refugees enter its territory
from other EU states, notably Italy and Greece, in a growing blame game.
"States or groups of states that permanently break the law have to
expect legal consequences," Interior Minister Wolfgang Sobotka told ORF
radio, responding to a question on Hungary's refusal to give ground.
"In that case, the (Austrian) republic must sue. The republic must
see that the European Union acts according to the law, full stop," he
added, without specifying what legal process he was considering.
Budapest built a fence along its border with non-EU member Serbia to stem
the flow of hundreds of thousands of people, many of them fleeing violence in
the Middle East and North Africa. Both Hungary and Austria had said this month
the situation was now broadly under control.
A Hungarian government spokesman dismissed Sobotka's call in an emailed
statement, saying the vast majority of migrants had arrived in other EU states
first.
"Hungary cannot and will not take responsibility for, and suffer the
consequences of, the irresponsible conduct of other member states - Austria,
Germany - which expressly suggested ignoring the rules, or for other states -
Greece - that neglected to do their job," the spokesman said.
Germany and Austria initially welcomed large numbers of refugees from the
Middle East and Afghanistan. However, Vienna started to toughen its asylum
rules earlier this year and introduced an annual limit on the number of asylum
requests it accepts.
Those steps, widely criticized by human rights groups and the European
Union, came after support for the far-right Freedom Party (FPO) in opinion
polls surged ahead of the ruling centrist parties.
FPO candidate Norbert Gerwald is standing to become Europe's first
far-right head of state in presidential elections on Oct. 2, the same day as
the Hungarian referendum.
(Reporting By Shadia Nasralla; additional reporting by Marton Dunai in
BUDAPEST; Editing by Paul Tait and Andrew Heavens)
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