Engagement for Refugees in Budapest From my hotel room in Budapest at the weekend, I followed the images of Germany’s Willkommenskultur, the country’s policy and manner of welcoming refugees and migrants. Refugees who a few hours earlier did not know what would happen next were received warmly. I am pleased that these people no longer have to persevere in Budapest’s Keleti railway station or at the processing centres in Bicske and Röszke – they have now been granted permission to travel via Austria to Germany. By Eva van de Rakt
Budapest - Keleti For four days now I have been in Budapest, a witness to a drama that I would have considered impossible in an EU capital not long ago. By Eva van de Rakt
Budapest - Keleti For four days now I have been in Budapest, a witness to a drama that I would have considered impossible in an EU capital not long ago. By Eva van de Rakt
A "Brown Saturday" in Bratislava: Extremists Greet Refugees At the GLOBSEC 2015 security conference organised recently in Bratislava, Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico and Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán concordantly rejected a European Union proposal to introduce a quota system for allocating refugees arriving in Europe from Africa and the Middle East to individual countries. The method in which the politicians formulated their disapproval, however, attested to the fact that they do not have a problem with quotas as such, but that they do not want “unwanted” foreigners to enter their countries. But whereas in the case of the Hungarian prime minister the negative position on quotas could be interpreted as a reaction to the wave of migrants entering his country from Serbia, including ethnic Albanians fleeing socio-economic problems in Kosovo, in the case of Robert Fico this was a statement of position pro futuro without any connection to the present situation in Slovakia - essentially a preventive warning that foreigners (refugees, migrants) are not welcome here. By Grigorij Mesežnikov
Hungary’s hypocritical migration policy "We’d like to retain Hungary as Hungary", says Victor Orbán in January 2015. Xenophobia is significant in his country. How a multicultural and multi-ethnic society became a mono-ethnic and closed one. By Boldizsár Nagy
At Home in Homelessness “We were born to the world to be at home in it somewhere,” wrote the Hungarian author Áron Tamási. Yet not only the feeling of being at home, but also that of homelessness may be a common denominator among people who live in the same space – in the same cyberspace. By Anna Frenyó