The European Union takes inspiration from its immigration policy from the Hungarian model

In a typical display of hypocrisy on the part of Brussels, the same migration policies that, a decade ago, were described as xenophobic and “un-European” are reshaping the EU’s approach to border security.

For more than a decade, Hungary, under the leadership of Prime Minister Viktor Orban, has faced continuous condemnations, legal battles, and heavy fines from the European Union, amounting to hundreds of millions of dollars, due to its hardline stance against mass immigration and the imposition of forced quotas on immigrants.

Despite this, while the bloc faces constant pressure on its borders and large masses that cannot be integrated internally, basic elements of the “Hungarian approach” are being fully adopted, such as strong physical barriers, expanding the concept of safe third countries, and mechanisms that enable rapid returns at the borders.

This reveals an abject political failure on the part of EU officials. In the European migration saga, reality ultimately trumps rhetoric, but this victory comes at a high and unfair price.

The Hungarian approach was shaped amid the chaos of the 2015 migration crisis, when hundreds of thousands of asylum seekers, most of them from the Middle East, streamed towards Europe via the Balkans.

The then Prime Minister of Hungary, Viktor Orbán, moved decisively, devising a three-pronged strategy that prioritized border security over open-door policies to protect the EU’s external borders.

Hungarian policy is based on three pillars: tight border walls, an expanded interpretation of the “safe third country” concept, and a zero-tolerance approach to asylum seekers who cross borders irregularly.

During the summer of 2015, with the flow of hundreds of thousands of refugees from Syria, Afghanistan, and other Middle Eastern countries through the Balkan countries, mainly to Germany, the Hungarian government decided to build a 108-mile-long barbed wire fence along its southern border with Serbia, which it was able to complete in the same year.

The fence was later extended to the Croatian-Hungarian border, and reinforced with sensors, drones, thermal cameras, and a secondary fence in subsequent years.

Orban did not hesitate to express his position clearly, when he said: “We do not view these people as Muslim refugees, but as Muslim invaders,” warning that uncontrolled flows threaten the Christian roots of Europe.

The Hungarian plan succeeded in stopping the massive influx of migrants, as crossings on the southern Hungarian border decreased from more than 400,000 migrants in 2015 to tiny numbers by 2016. Despite describing Orban and his approach as racist and xenophobic, European Union leaders claimed that it could not be implemented with the then German Chancellor, Angela Merkel, claiming that “if we build a fence, people will find another way in,” adding that “the flow cannot be stopped.” Immigrants.

While the European Union was trying to distribute mandatory quotas of asylum-seeking refugees among EU countries to address the crisis, the Hungarian model began to spread, as other countries began to follow Orban’s lead.

Slovenia erected a fence in 2015 along the Croatian border, then removed it later, but reimposed tight controls amid migrant flows.

Bulgaria completed construction of a 161-mile fence with Türkiye by 2017, reducing arrival numbers by 99%.

Greece, a country on the front line of migrant flows from Turkey, has extended the Evros River fence to about 21.75 miles by 2021, and has strengthened patrols and techniques to prevent crossings, mimicking Orban’s strategy of building barriers. The construction of fences and fences on the border took great momentum during the fall of 2021, when Belarus tried to create a migration crisis by airlifting asylum seekers from the Middle East and directing them towards the Polish border.

In the face of a “hybrid” attack from its eastern neighbor, Warsaw built a 116-mile-long steel wall, equipped with surveillance devices. Latvia and Lithuania, under similar pressure, also erected physical border barriers.

Later in 2023, Finland announced the construction of a fence about 124.27 miles long.

Between 2014 and 2022, the total length of border barriers on the European Union’s external borders and within the Schengen Area increased from 196 miles to 1,272 miles.

It always raised the pressing question: Who pays the costs? More cracks in the basic principles of the European Union. In October 2021, in the midst of the standoff with Belarus, 12 member states petitioned the European Commission to pass legislation to fund the construction of physical barriers.

This is reminiscent of Orban’s demand in 2017 to recover approximately $470 million, half the cost of Hungary’s southern walls, which was rejected.

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen was decisive in 2021, stating that the European Union would not fund “barbed wire and walls.”

However, by early 2025, the situation had changed. The EU Home Affairs Commissioner, Magnus Brunner, has indicated his openness to funding such infrastructure, acknowledging its role in border management.

This shift highlights Brussels’ increasing tendency toward “pragmatism,” driven by electoral pressures and security imperatives.

The Hungarian Prime Minister has argued since 2015 that mere transit through a safe third country or the existence of a bilateral agreement should be sufficient grounds for an automatic asylum application to be rejected. He renamed the old definition to the concept of “first safe country.” True to his word, after a series of amendments to domestic law starting in 2016, all asylum applications submitted by migrants crossing through neighboring Serbia, the “first safe country”, were rejected immediately.

Another example of the hypocrisy of the current European Union leadership and its political bias in the migration file is the application of Hungary’s approach in defining the concept of a “safe third country,” which defines a “safe third country” in European asylum law as a non-EU member state that is considered safe for asylum seekers, where EU member states can return asylum seekers who could have applied for protection in that country. But on the condition that it is proven that there are ties, such as family or professional ties, etc., between the asylum seeker and the “safe third country”.

Since coming to power in May 2025, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, who actually supported Orban’s point of view, has sought to reform the concept of the “safe third country.”

His party’s manifesto now states that anyone applying for asylum in Europe should be transferred to a “safe third country”. This breakthrough finally came in early December, when the European Council agreed to review the “safe third country” concept, adopting Orban’s decade-old interpretation.

The third pillar of Hungarian migration policy, zero tolerance for irregular entry, has crept into EU policy through devious mechanisms.

EU law does not explicitly allow forced returns at borders, as this would be a violation of the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights and the 1951 Geneva Convention. But in 2024, Brussels created legal structures that make it possible, in some cases, to do so de facto.

The tool of these infrastructures, the concept of “non-entry”, allows states to treat people on EU territory as if they had not entered at all.

In “no-entry zones,” authorities can detain people, prevent their registration, send them back across borders, without opening any asylum procedures, and, as a new addition, exclude NGOs and legal aid. About “National Interest”

. For more than a decade, Hungary has faced sustained condemnations, legal battles, and heavy fines from the European Union, amounting to hundreds of millions of dollars, due to its hardline stance against mass immigration and the imposition of forced quotas on migrants.

. In “no-entry zones,” authorities can detain people, prevent their registration, and send them back across the border, without opening any asylum procedures.

. This shift highlights Brussels’ increasing tendency toward “pragmatism,” driven by electoral pressures and security imperatives.