Orbán concerned about Western terrorist cells, announces tightened controls of foreign travellers entering country

The war in the Middle East has a direct impact on Hungary's security situation, which is why Prime Minister Viktor Orbán convened the Counter-Terrorism Coordination Committee and placed the counter-terrorism agencies on high alert, the PM himself announced in a video released on Thursday.

"We have learnt that through mass migration, terrorist organizations from the Middle East have established themselves and have grown stronger in Western Europe. We now expect these organizations and terrorist cells located in Europe to be activated”, Orbán said in the video. The government, however, will protect Hungary's peace and security, which is why

"we have stepped up controls of foreign nationals entering Hungary"

– he said.

The short video does not reveal exactly what this will mean in practice. According to the video, Interior Minister Sándor Pintér and János Hajdu, Director General of the Counter-Terrorism Center also participated in the meeting.

The threat of terrorism coming from the west also came up at the government briefing, with Gergely Gulyás, Minister of the Prime Minister's Office, saying that the terrorist threat has increased in Hungary due to the freedom of movement within the Schengen area. He said that although there are few people of Middle Eastern origin living in Hungary, they can enter from the west via the Schengen border. He also mentioned that the government had raised the level of terrorist threat.