When national tourist boards produce videos extolling their country’s attractions, they normally highlight the beaches or the nightlife. A new video promoting holidays in Hungary, however, boasts of something rather different.
The absence of illegal immigrants.
Hungary, this government-approved video proclaims, is “the safest place in Europe” – because “we refuse to let illegal migrants in”. Even more startlingly, it adds that, because of this refusal, the EU forces Hungary to “pay a fine of €1m to Brussels every day”. That’s equivalent to around £875,000. Yet the people behind the video don’t seem to be complaining. In fact, they clearly think it’s a bargain. In the words of Viktor Orban, Hungary’s prime minister: “We’ll pay it. For our safety, and yours. Better than living in fear.”
Unsurprisingly, the video’s message has not gone down well with Left-wing Eurocrats. Daniel Freund, a Green MEP from Germany, snorted: “I don’t think anyone has ever understood the Christmas story less than Viktor Orban.” After all, he said, “Christmas is literally about people from the Middle East seeking shelter.”
Well, yes – but the shelter they were seeking was still in the Middle East. Joseph, Mary and the donkey did not pay a criminal gang to squeeze them aboard a rubber dinghy, so that they could illegally enter a country in another continent. And, when they arrived in Bethlehem, they did not sexually assault any 14-year-old girls, or stab a member of the stable’s staff to death with a screwdriver. Herr Freund’s analysis, therefore, is not entirely watertight.
Or have I misunderstood his meaning? Is he perhaps suggesting that European countries should take in every military-age man who tries to breach their borders, on the off-chance that one of these men turns out to be the son of God?
Such a prospect, I fear, is somewhat remote. Of the countless “people from the Middle East” who have come “seeking shelter” in our own country since the small boats crisis began, few, to my knowledge, have done much to spread the word of God. Or at least, not the Christian one.
So in Britain, if not in Brussels, quite a few people may rather admire Hungary’s stance – and feel that, in the same position, they too would happily contribute to a fine of €1m a day. To put that fine in context: it’s less than a sixth of the sum Britain spends every day on migrant hotels.
Imagine if every country in the EU decided to pay a daily fine, rather than accept illegal immigrants. For one thing, it would make Brussels an awful lot richer.
It’s a wonder the Eurocrats are complaining at all.