OREANDA-NEWS. György Bakondi, Chief Security Advisor to the Prime Minister, has told Hungarian public television channel M1 that the Government’s stance is that, instead of administrating asylum requests, the priority task of the EU border and coast guards should be border protection.

Mr. Bakondi said that fewer than 500 of the 1,500 members of the common border and coast guard established as the successor to the EU’s external border agency Frontex are actually carrying out border protection services. The rest of them are visa and fingerprint experts, and officers for primary or secondary hearings and communication.

The profile of the organisation, therefore, Mr. Bakondi said, is not border protection, but rather admitting asylum seekers to the EU in an organised manner and rescuing them at sea. He added that Hungary did not vote for the proposal, because the Government’s standpoint remains that the organisation should instead carry out border protection tasks.

In relation to staffing of the joint border and coast guard, Mr. Bakondi said that while on the Hungarian-Serbian border there are currently 8,000 border guards and police officers fulfilling their border protection duties, the EU organisation has only 1,500 members.

Nevertheless, he said, the organisation is useful, as it is directly deployable: at any time it can be used to strengthen a border section which has immediate needs. He added that Hungary is contributing 65 people to the body.

In addition Mr. Bakondi told Kossuth Rádió’s "180 Minutes" programme that although migration pressure decreased throughout the course of last winter, this might not be the case this year, because the route has now shifted from the sea to the Turkish-Bulgarian and Turkish-Greek green borders.