Ungern bygger mur mot invandrare

The latest intelligence assessment of criminality in the western Balkans – an area with a well-known history of violence, instability and organised crime – is worrying. It is now beyond doubt that some of the region’s most unscrupulous and established criminal syndicates have moved into migrant smuggling.

A third of the 130 ongoing Europol investigations into people smuggling are, the Observer has learned, linked to criminal gangs that have previously had form for drug trafficking, supplying girls to the sex trade or money laundering. On Friday the agency said it had now identified 3,000 serious players linked to people-smuggling in Europe, including a number of Britons.

The sheer number of vulnerable migrants moving through the western Balkans guarantees, according to police sources, an easy income stream for the Balkans’ longstanding criminal gangs. Izabella Cooper, spokesperson for Frontex, added that the numbers involved – Germany expects a record 750,000 asylum-seekers to arrive this year – means that people-smuggling is probably the most lucrative line of work for European criminals to be in.

http://www.theguardian.com/world/201...-smuggling-web

Romania responded angrily. The foreign ministry said building a fence between two EU member states is “not in accordance with the European spirit.” The prime minister, Victor Ponta, told Romanian television it showed that Hungary “has political decision-makers who are no better than those in Syria, Libya or other countries that refugees flee from.” Mr Orban, a nationalist who has said he does not believe in liberal democracy, has provoked denunciations by fellow European leaders before. But being compared to Bashar al-Assad seemed to mark a new low.

Mr Orban’s motivations are similarly political. His Fidesz party has been losing support to a yet more chauvinistic right-wing party, Jobbik. Denying Muslim migrants entry into the country, even as a transit point on their way to Germany, has helped him regain popularity. Furthermore, conservative Hungarian voters take a dim view of Romania; the two countries have been bickering for decades over the status of the large Hungarian minority in the Romanian region of Transylvania. For Mr Orban, if his popular policies of cruelty to migrants happen to provoke a needless fight with Romania, that may simply be an added bonus.

In any case, the fence is unlikely ever to be built. Initial reports from Serbia of the migrants’ response to the closing of the Hungarian border suggest most are turning towards Croatia rather than trying to reach Romania, which would require crossing the River Danube. Migrants are unlikely to reach Romania via Bulgaria, which built its own border fence with Turkey last year.

http://www.economist.com/news/europe...politics-about

Prime Minister Viktor Orbán announced today on Kossuth Radio that the construction of the makeshift fence on the Hungarian - Croatian border has started Friday night and will be completed today. The fence will be 41 km long.

Police rounding up illegal immigrants entered the country from Croatia.
These people will be put on trail and end up with criminal records, which reduces their chances to be accepted anywhere in the European Union as refugees to zero.

Secretary of State for Culture Péter Hoppál announced Friday morning in Pécs that the construction of the fence at the Hungarian - Croatian border has started in ten locations. First, a makeshift barbed wire fence will be built, after comes the construction of the more permanent four meters high barrier.