The fence along Hungary’s border with Serbia has been extended and reinforced, the Deputy State Secretary for EU Affairs, Bence Rétvári, has said.
Authorities in Hungary have said that a total of the ten-kilometre section has been added to the 165 kilometres fence in the Hercegszanto zone, SchengenVisaInfo.com reports.
The States Secretary said that the new section was protecting a marshy zone that had not seen so many irregular entries previously, but smugglers discovered the new route last summer.
Up to this point, the government of Hungary spend a total of €1.8 billion on building and keeping its border seal.
“While Hungary also protects the European Union’s common border, the EU in fact does not contribute to border control costs and has only refunded one per cent,” he pointed out.
Rétvári noted that irregular migrants were equipped with knives and slings, and there were some in recent months with tear gas on them.
State Secretary said that migrants “well educated by rights groups would record police actions with their cameras so that they could later file a complaint against those enforcing the law”.
According to him, despite the countless procedures of the European Commission, the country will keep relentlessly guarding the southern border, return irregular entrants and detain and prosecute people smugglers.
In this regard, the Chief Security Adviser to Prime Minister, György Bakondi, emphasized that authorities in Hungary apprehended more than 55,000 irregular entrants since January this year, confirming that the total number had surpassed 965,000 since 2015.
Bakondi said that there was ongoing pressure on the country’s common border with Serbia while revealing that migrant activities in other Balkan countries such as Romania, Slovenia, and Croatia also marked an increase.
According to him, irregular migrants were now reaching with people smugglers noting that 448 of them were detained during the first half of this year.
In addition, Bakondi also added that the country is offering support in order to help controls the Serbia-North Macedonia border as well.
Authorities in Hungary are continuously attempting to strengthen controls at their borders in order to stop people who attempt to reach the country in an unlawful way.
The figures provided by AboutHungary, the website managed by the international communication office of the country’s PM, in May revealed that authorities in Hungary managed to stop at the country’s borders about 49,000 people who attempted to reach this territory illegally and a total of 387 people smugglers.