Hungary Asks EU to Take 'Fair Share' of Cost of Border Protection
Finance Minister Mihály Varga asked for the European Union to make an "equitable" contribution to covering the cost of Hungary's spending on protecting its border in a letter sent to European Commissioner for Budget and Administration Johannes Hahn on Thursday, according to a report by state news wire MTI.
In the letter, which Mr Varga posted on his social media page, he noted that Hungary had spent over EUR 1.6 billion on border protection since the start of the migrant crisis, while the EU's contribution to that amount "hardly exceeds 1%".
Hungary would consider it "fair and equitable" if the EU would acknowledge efforts Hungary has made to protect the EU frontier against illegal immigration and "take a fair share" in financing the related costs, he wrote.
He pointed to the "public security challenges" resulting from migration in big European cities and said it had become a "daily routine" for migrants to use live firearms at the Hungarian borders.
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