Hungary will no longer take back asylum seekers from other EU member states because it has reached its maximum capacity for hosting refugees, the government said Tuesday, according to dpa. The Interior Ministry said Hungary would suspend a rule that allows EU countries to dispatch asylum seekers to the countries in which they first entered the European Union, the state-run MTI news agency reported. The suspension is to last for an undetermined period. The announcement came two days before European leaders are to meet at a summit to discuss a fairer distribution of migrants within the EU. About 100,000 people had reached the EU via the Balkans and Hungary since last year, of whom 60,000 arrived this year, Hungarian government spokesman Zoltan Kovacs told the Austrian daily Die Presse in Vienna. "We hope for a European solution, but we have to protect Hungarian interests and protect our people," he said. "Everyone is fixated on the Mediterreanean" instead of also taking the inflow through the Balkans into consideration, he complained. Eighteen per cent of the 186,000 asylum seekers registered in the EU in the first quarter of the year have applied for papers in Hungary, according to data provided by Eurostat, the EU's statistical agency.
