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Hungary’s recent decision to ease visa restrictions for Russian visitors is an open door to spies and EU leaders should take urgent countermeasures, the bloc’s biggest political party has said.
In a letter seen by the Financial Times, Manfred Weber, chair of the European People’s party, said the move would allow unvetted Russians to travel through much of the EU unhindered and raised “serious national security concerns”.
Weber has written to European Council president Charles Michel to raise the issue at the next leaders’ summit in October.
Hungary this month published details of a new fast-track visa system for citizens of eight countries, including Russia and Belarus, to enter Hungary without security checks or other restrictions. Budapest said many would be building a nuclear power plant with Russian technology.
But Weber said the need for a new immigration system in Hungary was “questionable” and warned it could “create grave loopholes for espionage activities, and potentially allowing large numbers of Russians to enter Hungary with minimal supervision, posing a serious risk to national security”.
“This policy could also make it easier for Russians to move around the Schengen [borderless] area, bypassing the restrictions required by EU law,” added Weber.
The letter calls for EU leaders “to adopt the most stringent measures to immediately protect the integrity of the [border-free] Schengen area, limit the security risk that has already arisen and prevent member states from taking similar initiatives in the future”.
Zoltán Kovács, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s spokesman, accused Weber of lying.
“The Hungarian immigration regime is the strictest in the EU, he posted on X. “Guest workers are only allowed entry under a regulated framework, which includes a national security check, and they can stay for a limited period solely for employment purposes.”
Orbán prompted a backlash from fellow EU leaders earlier this month when he travelled to Moscow to meet Russian President Vladimir Putin after a stop in Kyiv, allegedly in an attempt to broker peace talks between Russia and Ukraine.
While Hungary holds the rotating EU presidency until the end of the year, other leaders were quick to say Orbán did not represent them on his travels. Many countries have since refused to send their ministers to meetings held in Hungary, prompting them to be rescheduled in Brussels.
Under EU rules, national governments have the power to make decisions on legal migration and working permits. People from outside the EU who have an EU visa can generally move around freely inside the Schengen area, which covers 29 countries, including Norway and Switzerland.
Under sanctions introduced since the 2022 war, Russians are not banned from travelling to the EU, though airlines based in Russia are no longer allowed to fly into the bloc, and hundreds of people connected to the Kremlin are on individual travel bans and asset-freeze lists.
The European Commission said Tuesday it would reach out to Budapest “to clarify the scope of this scheme and whether or not it falls under the remit of the EU rules”. A spokesperson for the commission added that Russia was a “security threat to the EU” and that all instruments adopted at a national level needed “to ensure the safety of the union and also to take into account the security of the Schengen area”.
Michel’s spokeswoman said she could not comment until the letter had arrived.
A spokesperson for the Hungarian government did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The EPP used to be Orbán’s political family until 2021 when he was forced out over concerns about his increasingly autocratic rule. His Fidesz party, which espouses ultranationalist views, has since teamed up with France’s Marine Le Pen and other far-right parties in the EU assembly.
Growing frustration with Hungary for its pro-Russia stance has also strained relations with its former ally Poland.
At the weekend, Orbán hit out at Poland for “the most sanctimonious and the most hypocritical policy”, claiming it bought Russian oil “indirectly”.
Polish deputy foreign minister Władysław Teofil Bartoszewski rejected the claim. “I don’t really understand why Hungary wants to remain a member of organisations they dislike so much and that supposedly treat them badly,” he said.
“Why doesn’t [Orbán] create a union with Putin and some authoritarian states of that type?”
Additional reporting by Raphael Minder in Warsaw