Deal on refugees coming soon, says Hungary’s PM Viktor Orban

EU and Turkish leaders may soon announce a behind-the-scenes agreement to resettle 400,000 to 500,000 Syrian refugees directly from Turkey to the EU, Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orban has said.

Orban has locked horns with EU partners for years over economic policy, political freedoms and recently the handling of the refugee crisis, in which the Hungarian leader took a hard line and erected a steel fence along the country’s southern border to keep out migrants.

Hungary has firmly resisted the idea of resettlement quotas to distribute more evenly the refugees, most of whom wanted to go to Germany or Sweden.