Quelle: Bloomberg

^Hungary’s government wants to impose prison terms of as long as four years on those who damage a fence that’s being built along the Serb border to repel hundreds of thousands of migrants, a senior minister said.

The government is calling for an extraordinary session of parliament to pass the legislation, which would also tighten penalties for smuggling people, Janos Lazar, the minister in charge of the Prime Minister’s office, told reporters on Tuesday.

The cabinet will send thousands of police to patrol a barbed-wire fence, that’s being built along the 175-kilometer (109-mile) border shared by Hungary and Serbia. An initial phase of the fence will be built by Aug. 31, Lazar said. The cabinet forecasts as many as 300,000 illegal border crossings this year, compared with 43,000 last year.

Hungary serves as an entry point to the European Union’s passport-free Schengen zone for immigrants who predominantly plan to settle in western Europe and often arrive via the Balkans.