Over 19 000 immigrants could be sent back to Hungary from Germany, Austria, France, Sweden, and the Czech Republic under the Dublin Agreements, Sándor Pintér, Hungary’s Minister of Interior, has said. Mr. Pintér said in response to an opposition question concerning the expected number of migrants to be returned to Hungary from other European Union countries that a total of 19 284 requests had been submitted to Hungary’s immigration authority, mostly from Germany and Austria. He said that since the beginning of the year, 66 788 people had applied for political refugee status in Hungary and over 43 000 of those procedures had been terminated because the applicant left the country in the meantime. The figures suggest, he said, that the migrants filed a similar application in another country, and, under the Dublin Agreements, they could be returned to Hungary. European Union member states returned 780 migrants to Hungary by July 16 this year, including 766 whose procedures had been started here. Fully 685 of them did not wait for a decision in their case but left the country shortly after filing a request, Mr. Pintér said.
