House Defence Committee Fails to Meet Over Migrant Transport Claims
Bratislava, 23 April (TASR) - Parliament's defence and security committee didn't discuss suspicions that the organised transport of migrants to Slovakia's borders took place ahead of the 2023 parliamentary elections, as raised by Hungarian election winner Peter Magyar, since it failed to reach a quorum on Thursday due to insufficient attendance.
"This isn't about what Peter Magyar says, but about the fact that Interior Minister Matus Sutaj Estok (Voice-SD) and Prime Minister Robert Fico (Smer-SD) should have appeared before official bodies of the House, which met today, to answer all questions and refute all suspicions and accusations," stated Milan Majersky, leader of the opposition Christian Democratic Movement (KDH).
Majersky said that he wanted to know whether the handling of migrants could amount to treason. "What happened before the elections was a clear misuse of both the 'Hungarian card' and the migration issue that was on the table at the time," he added.
Committee member Andrea Turcanova (KDH) pointed to data from the Interior Ministry's migration website. She noted that 670 migrants crossed the border in August 2022, compared with 9,089 in August 2023.
"In total, 46,259 migrants illegally crossed the Hungarian border in 2023. These aren't invented figures but numbers provided by the Interior Ministry. There is a reasonable suspicion that something was happening two months before the elections, as the numbers peaked just then," she said, adding that a total of 44 migrants crossed the border in 2024.
Opposition lawmaker Juraj Krupa (Freedom and Solidarity/SaS) questioned what measures the governing coalition has taken against illegal migration and how the police managed to hermetically seal the Hungarian border after the election, as it claimed.
"I'm not aware of any [measures]. I only know that the migrants suddenly stopped coming. It's possible that when they saw Sutaj Estok and Fico standing at the border, they turned around and headed for North Korea instead," said Krupa.
Coalition lawmaker and committee chair Richard Gluck (Smer-SD) called the opposition statements on illegal migration nonsense. He said that then-prime minister Ludovit Odor (2023) should have acted if he had any suspicions.
"If Mr. Odor had such information and didn't act, then in my opinion he may have committed a criminal offence or is simply lying," said Gluck, who also ruled out any coordination between Hungary and the then-Slovak opposition, which included Smer-SD.
"How can an opposition politician coordinate steps if they essentially have no power?" he asked.
The committee session and summoning of the prime minister and interior minister were initiated by KDH with respect to illegal migration. They sought to establish whether Fico had arranged for migrants to appear at the borders and whether Hungary under Prime Minister Viktor Orban influenced the Slovak election.
