BBC — People in Hungary are voting in a referendum on accepting mandatory EU quotas for relocating migrants.
Right-wing Prime Minister Viktor Orban opposes plans to relocate a total of 160,000 migrants across the bloc.
Under the scheme, announced after last year’s migrant crisis, Hungary would receive 1,294 asylum seekers.
Opinion polls suggest strong support for a rejection among those who say they will vote. To be valid, turnout needs to be over 50% of voters.
During the migrant crisis, Hungary became a transit state on the Western Balkan route to Germany and other EU destinations.
In an effort to curb the influx, it sealed its border with Serbia and Croatia. The measure was popular at home but criticised by human rights groups.
Voters are being asked: “Do you want the European Union to be able to mandate the obligatory resettlement of non-Hungarian citizens into Hungary even without the approval of the National Assembly?”
In December Hungary filed a court challenge against the EU plan, which would see relocations over two years.
In a TV interview on Thursday, Mr Orban said: “If there are more ‘no’ votes than ‘yes’ votes, that means Hungarians do not accept the rule which the bureaucrats of the European Commission want to forcefully impose on us.”
“The more migrants there are, the greater the risk of terror,” he added, according to excerpts published by Reuters news agency.
The EU proposal was meant to ease pressure on Greece and Italy, the main entry points for migrants and refugees into the bloc.
Mr Orban closely links migration to terrorism, and what he regards as the dilution of European Christian culture. He wants to play a bigger role on the European stage, as a “champion of the concerns of ordinary Europeans”, against the actions of “an unelected, liberal elite”.
Medieval Hungary was ruled by the Ottoman Empire from 1541 to 1699. Ottoman rule covered mostly the central and southern territories of the former medieval Kingdom of Hungary as almost the entire region of the Great Hungarian Plain (except the northeastern parts) and Southern Transdanubia. If 150 years of Ottoman Muslim rule did not manage to dilute Hungary’s European culture how would 1295 migrants manage to do that?
Like in the Brexit referendum the issue of migration is used here as a smokescreen for passing more of the proposed labour reforms and austerity favoured by Europe and ‘covering up the failure of government of Viktor Orbán to distract from its domestic failures’ as some critics of Orbán have claimed. Political analysts say a strong turnout will give the prime minister added momentum in his battle for the soul of the continent.
Orbán believes in devolving power from Brussels, in building fences to deter migrants, and in deconstructing the kind of liberal democracy represented by the likes of German chancellor Angela Merkel. He recently called for a “cultural counter-revolution” within Europe, has praised aspects of strongman leadership by Russia’s Vladimir Putin and Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, and hopes his referendum will lead to a series of similar plebiscites across the continent. So, it could be a case of ‘Angela Merkel come back – all is forgiven’.
Mr Orban proposes that all migrants be put in a giant refugee camp in Libya, from which they can apply to come to Europe. His policy has proven popular in Hungary. His Fidesz party has regained voters it had lost, and the referendum is a useful organising tool ahead of the next parliamentary elections in 2018.
Mr Orban would like the satisfaction of Chancellor Angela Merkel falling from power in Germany, the EU abandoning compulsory quotas, and the Visegrad 4 countries (Hungary, Slovakia, Czech Republic and Poland) emerging as a strong power bloc for a Europe of nation-states, against the federal vision of French, German and other leaders.
