Hungarian PM Viktor Orban isn’t exactly pro-migrant.
In fact, he’s gone out of his way to let Europe know that when it comes to accommodating the hundreds of thousands of asylum seekers fleeing the war-torn Mid-East, Budapest isn’t interested. Here's what happened when refugees dared to test Orban's resolve when it comes to defending the country's newly constructed, razor wire anti-migrant fence:
As we’ve documented extensively, Hungary’s move to close off its borders with Croatia and Serbia has triggered a veritable Balkan border battle wherein no one can quite figure out the best way to divert hundreds of thousands of refugees to Germany without turning their own countries into migrant super highways.
For his part, Ukraine puppet master [12], tax dodger [13], billionaire philanthropist, and native Hungarian George Soros says Orban's policy is inhibiting the EU's ability to respond effectively. Here's an excerpt from a Project Syndicate Op-Ed [14] we highlighted [15] earlier this month:
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán has now also produced a six-point plan to address the crisis. But his plan, which subordinates the human rights of asylum-seekers and migrants to the security of borders, threatens to divide and destroy the EU by renouncing the values on which it was built and violating the laws that are supposed to govern it.
As a reminder, here are the six elements Soros says [16] should underpin a comprehensive EU migrant plan:
- Accepting at least one million asylum seekers annually.
- Leading a global effort to help Turkey, Lebanon, and Jordan get adequate funding for the four million refugees in those countries. (Soros calculates the cost as at least €5,000 per refugee.)
- Establishing a single EU Asylum and Migration Agency, leading eventually to a single EU border guard (replacing the 28 separate systems that current function in an inadequate patchwork manner).
- Creating safe channels for getting asylum seekers to Europe and from Greece and Italy to their destination countries,
- Using these necessary EU operational and financial arrangements as the basis for establishing “global standards for the treatment of asylum-seekers and migrants,”
- “[Mobilizing] the private sector—NGOs, church groups, and businesses—to act as sponsors” for refugees and asylum seekers,
Well, Viktor Orban isn't exactly one to hold his tongue and now, the Hungarian premier is out accusing Soros of attempting to usurp "the European lifestyle." Here's more from Bloomberg [17]:
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban accused billionaire investor George Soros of being a prominent member of a circle of "activists" trying to undermine European nations by supporting refugees heading to the continent from the Middle East and beyond.
"His name is perhaps the strongest example of those who support anything that weakens nation states, they support everything that changes the traditional European lifestyle," Orban said in an interview on public radio Kossuth.
"These activists who support immigrants inadvertently become part of this international human-smuggling network."
Rights groups have criticized Orban for building a razor-wire fence on the border, tightening asylum laws and boosting his support among voters with anti-immigrant rhetoric. Soros, who was born in Hungary and is one of the biggest philanthropists in eastern Europe via his foundations and university, gives grants to organizations that provide legal assistance to asylum seekers.
So who's right? The billionaire who has variously encouraged Washington to send lethal aid to Kiev in the fight against Russian-backed separatists or the PM who seems hell bent on preserving a polarizing religious divide between the West and the Mid-East on the way to promoting intense (and possibly dangerous) bouts of nationalism not to mention a heightened sense of xenophobia in Eastern Europe?
We'll leave it to readers to decide, but just note that i) the more debt Germany and others have to take on in order to cope with the hundreds of thousands of migrants flooding the Balkans, the more monetizable assets the ECB has to play with thus perpetuating the QE status quo, and ii) the Prime Minister of an EU country has now accused George Soros of "inadvertently" supporting human trafficking. That's not exactly a harmless charge.
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