How Hungary’s Migration Model Became Europe’s New Norm |
In a characteristic display of hypocrisy from Brussels, the very migration policies branded as xenophobic and “un-European” a decade ago are now reshaping the EU’s approach to border security. For over a decade, Hungary, under the leadership of Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, has faced relentless condemnation, legal battles, and staggering EU fines totaling hundreds of millions of dollars for its hardline stance against mass migration and forced migrant quotas.
Yet, as the bloc grapples with persistent pressures on its frontiers and with unassimilable masses at home, key elements of the “Hungarian way”—robust physical barriers, a broadened interpretation of safe third countries, and mechanisms enabling swift returns at the border—are being adopted wholesale. This exposes the Eurocrats’ massive policy failure: in Europe’s migration saga, realism eventually trumps rhetoric, but vindication comes at a steep, unjust price.
The blueprint of the Hungarian way was forged amid the chaos of the 2015 migration crisis, when hundreds of thousands of asylum-seekers, primarily from the Middle East, surged toward Europe via the Balkans. Hungary’s Viktor Orbán moved decisively, establishing a tripartite strategy that prioritized border security over open-door policies to defend the EU’s external borders. The Hungarian policy rests on three pillars: ironclad border fences, a broadened interpretation of the safe third country concept, and a zero-tolerance approach to asylum-seekers crossing irregularly.
During the summer of 2015, as hundreds of thousands of migrants from Syria, Afghanistan, and other Middle-Eastern countries poured through the Balkans en route mainly to Germany, the Hungarian government decided to erect a 108-mile-long razor-wire fence along its Southern border with Serbia, finishing it in the same year. The fence was subsequently extended to the Croatian-Hungarian border and reinforced by sensors, drones, thermal cameras, and a secondary fence during the following years. Orbán minced no words: “We don’t see these people as Muslim refugees. We see them as Muslim invaders,” warning that unchecked flows threaten Europe’s Christian roots.
The Hungarian blueprint succeeded in stopping the tidal wave of migrants, with crossings at the Hungarian Southern border plummeting from over 400,000 in 2015 to a trickle by 2016. While Orbán and his approach were labeled as racist and xenophobic, EU leaders also falsely claimed that it cannot work with then German chancellor Angela Merkel, claiming that “If we build a fence, people will find another way in,” adding that “there is no stopping the arrivals.”
As the EU was trying to impose a mandatory redistribution of asylum seekers among member states to address the crisis, the Hungarian model began to proliferate as other countries began to follow Orban’s lead. Already in 2015, Slovenia erected a fence along the Croatian border 2015, dismantling it later but