Refugees should not risk their children's lives trying to reach Europe, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban said today as he defended his tough approach to border control to senior EU officials in Brussels.
Saying "people in Europe are full of fear" due to leaders' failure to agree on how to deal with the migration crisis, Mr Orban again rejected an EU proposal to share out quotas of refugees among states and insisted Hungary would apply EU rules on registering any asylum-seekers who made it past its new frontier fence before it would let them continue journeys to Germany.
"We Hungarians are full of fear, people in Europe are full of fear because they see that the European leaders ... are not able to control the situation," Mr Orban said after meeting European Parliament President Martin Schulz, as hundreds of migrants pushed onto trains in Budapest hoping to head west.
In a pugnacious performance typical of a right-wing leader who has often clashed with liberal sentiment in Brussels, Mr Orban rejected criticism of the razor-wire fence he has thrown up along the EU's external frontier with Serbia.
Asked about an image of a drowned Syrian child on a Turkish beach which has grabbed media attention across Europe this week, he said this was not a moral argument for opening Europe's doors but rather highlighted why families should not take to the sea.
"If we would create... an impression 'just come because we are ready to accept everybody', that would be a moral failure. The moral, human thing is to make clear: Please don't come," Orban said.
"Turkey is a safe country. Stay there. It's risky to come. It's better for the family, for the kids, for yourself to stay."
MR Orban said his government was determined to apply EU rules on preventing people from crossing the bloc's external border outside of controlled checkpoints and to register and identify all those who arrived to claim asylum.
Saying that Hungarians feared that a failure on their part to control migrants would cause their EU neighbours to reimpose their own border checks on Hungary, he warned that the bloc's Schengen system of open internal frontiers could be at risk.
"Hungary did everything to fulfil regulations," Mr Orban said. "Don't criticise Hungary for doing what is compulsory. And instead of criticising us, just let us Hungary do the job as it is written in the European regulations."
On Hungary's handling of thousands of people in Budapest who are trying to reach Germany where Chancellor Angela Merkel has said all Syrians will be taken in, he said: "The problem is not a European problem. The problem is a German problem.
"Nobody would like to stay in Hungary ... So if the German chancellor insists that nobody can leave Hungary without registration towards Germany, we will register them.
"What is going on is a shame. It's chaotic, it's not European," he added. "It's not a way to come through the green border, going to the railway station, shouting the name of Germany and Chancellor Merkel and forcing the Hungarian police to let them go out of the country without registration."