The efforts of Hungary and Italy to protect Europe’s borders in the past three years has “proved that it’s not true that migration can’t be stopped,” Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán has said.
Following the visit from the deputy prime minister of Italy, Matteo Salvini, at the end of last week, Prime Minister Orbán told listeners of Kossuth Radio that by “stopping migration at sea, Matteo Salvini drove a nail into the coffin of the pro-migration politicians,” he said, “to which we [Hungary] also contributed by stopping migration on land.”
According to figures from the United Nations’s International Organization for Migration, Mediterranean migrant sea landings had fallen from 118,914 for the whole of 2017 to 23,126 for 2018 — a massive 80 per cent drop in illegal mass migration.
Italy had become the hotspot for illegal migrant arrivals since the European Union struck a deal with Turkey to stop the Middle East migrant flow to the continent, with Greece seeing 853,650 migrants during the whole of 2015, the year the migrant crisis began.
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After the deal, Italy saw their height of illegal landings during the migrant crisis totalling 181,436 in 2016, up from 153,842 in 2015, while the country was under the premiership of Prime Minister Matteo Renzi, who failed to stop the illegal flows of people.
Ahead of the 2018 Italian general election, populist-right League party leader Matteo Salvini pledged to stop illegal migration and the NGO ships — which have been accused of being a taxi service, ferrying migrants off the coast of North Africa to Italy, Malta, and Spain — and less than a year in the role as interior minister, his policies have successfully resulted in a drop in the illegal arrivals.
by Victoria Friedman