Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán described migration as a threat to the whole of Europe and warned that "uncontrolled immigration must be stopped."
He made the comments during a meeting with Giorgia Meloni, President of the Brothers of Italy (FdI) party.
Meanwhile Ms. Meloni said the Visegrád Four (V4) — of which Hungary is a member, alongside the Czech Republic, Poland and Slovakia — "occupies a special place" in her party's election manifesto, according to a Hungarian government press release.
Viktor Orbán Gatekeeper of Europe and saviour of Christian. State of the Nation address https://t.co/lWgng2GKPD pic.twitter.com/rSNLq5DiT5
— Stop the EU 🇬🇧 (@Stop_The_EU) 24 February 2018
Both Meloni and Orbán have been very outspoken and critical of Europe's open-door migration policy, which encouraged refugees to make the perilous journey across the Mediterranean Sea to Europe.
"We don't see these people as Muslim refugees. We see them as Muslim invaders. We believe that a large number of Muslims inevitably leads to parallel societies, because Christian and Muslim society will never unite. Multiculturalism is only an illusion," Orbán said earlier this year.
Con il primo ministro ungherese Viktor Orbán, vista Danubio, #Budapest. Tra #patrioti europei ci si intende subito alla grande. pic.twitter.com/qBdcEzFEG5
— Giorgia Meloni ن (@GiorgiaMeloni) 28 February 2018
[Tweet: "With the Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, view of the Danube, #Budapest. Among patriotic Europeans we are at once great."]
Other populist politicians have personally criticized German Chancellor Angela Merkel, as she is viewed as the person who engineered Europe's open-door migrant policy.
"Wisdom seems to have come very late to Mrs. Merkel. The acknowledgment of ‘no-go zones' in Germany unmistakably shows how precarious the situation has become in certain German neighborhoods since [the time when] Mrs. Merkel opened the borders for hundreds of thousands of economic migrants," French MEP for the right-wing National Front party Gilles Lebreton previously told Sputnik.
Since 2015, over two million migrants — mainly from Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, and a number of impoverished African nations — have entered Europe.
Most migrants initially arrived by sea in either Greece or Italy, before crossing through other European countries, such as the Czech Republic, to reach wealthier EU states, such as Germany and Sweden.
