Varga Invites EU Commissioner to Visit Southern Border

Finance Minister Mihály Varga has invited European Commissioner for Budget and Administration Johannes Hahn to assess first-hand the results of Hungary's border protection measures, according to a report by state news wire MTI.

In a post on Facebook on Monday, Varga said that he had written to Hahn in December, asking for the European Union to raise its contribution to covering the cost of Hungary's border protection. He noted that spending to protect the southern border, which is also the EU frontier, had added up to HUF 700 billion since 2015, to which Brussels had contributed a little more than 1%.

In response, the European Commission said that reimbursement of a larger share of the costs was "unjustified for the time being", Varga said.

"So I've invited Johannes Hahn to the southern border to see, in person, the efforts of the soldiers, police, and border patrols serving on the Hungarian border, and the results of the Hungarian system of border protection," he added.

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