Low turnout voids Hungarian vote to reject EU refugee policy

The government needed at least half of the electorate to take part in the referendum, which asked: “Do you want the European Union to be able to order the mandatory settlement of non-Hungarian citizens in Hungary without parliament’s consent?”

Hungarian women wearing traditional costumes attend a referendum on EU migrant quotas in Veresegyhaz, Hungary, October 2, 2016. REUTERS/Bernadett Szabo

Budapest // Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orban’s effort to boost his leverage in a divided European Union suffered a setback as too few voters turned out to make the result of a referendum on refugee policy binding.

Turnout was about 45 per cent, with 95 per cent support for Mr Orban’s preferred “no” vote, Gergely Gulyas, a deputy chairman of the ruling Fidesz party, said shortly after voting ended at 7pm in Budapest.

The government needed at least half the electorate to participate in the referendum, which asked the following question: “Do you want the European Union to be able to order the mandatory settlement of non-Hungarian citizens in Hungary without parliament’s consent?”

But Mr Orban has already downplayed the political significance of the eventual turnout and said there would be “legal consequences” regardless of the outcome.

Mr Orban’s right-wing government has led an expensive media offensive urging the eight-million-strong electorate to spurn the EU’s migrant quota deal, which wants to share migrants around the 28 member states via mandatory quotas without the consent of national parliaments.

“A valid referendum is always better than an invalid one, but the legal consequences will be the same,” he said on Sunday.

“There is only one condition for this: that there are more ‘No’ votes than ‘Yes’ votes.”

The firebrand leader has emerged as the standard-bearer of those opposed to German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s “open-door” policy, after Europe’s worst migration crisis since 1945.

Opposition parties and rights groups had called on Hungarians to boycott the referendum or spoil their ballot.

The EU migrant quota proposal — spearheaded by Germany and approved by most EU governments last year — seeks to ease pressure on front line countries Italy and Greece, where most migrants enter the EU.

But implementation has been slow. Eastern and central European nations are vehemently opposed to the plan aimed at relocating 160,000 people, many having fled war in Syria.

Even as Hungarians voted, Austria’s foreign minister Sebastian Kurz said the EU should stop clinging to its troubled plan.

“The target is totally unrealistic,” he said, warning that disagreements over the plan could threaten “the cohesion of the entire European Union”.

Hungary has not accepted a single one of the 1,294 refugees allocated to it under the scheme and instead joined Slovakia in filing a legal challenge against it.

The referendum threatens to further split the EU, already weakened by Britain’s decision in June to leave the union — a decision Orban has blamed on the EU’s handling of the migrant crisis.

European Parliament president Martin Schulz warned Sunday that Hungary was playing “a dangerous game”.

To cement his power at home, Mr Orban “plays with the EU’s founding principle: he questions Europe’s legal basis — which Hungary was involved in creating,” Mr Schulz said.

*Agence France-Presse and Bloomberg