Viktor Orban, the populist prime minister of Hungary issued a personal behind-the-scenes challenge to the French president Emmanuel Macron to contest the ideological future of Europe, The Telegraph can reveal.

European sources said that Mr Orban announced a political tug-of-war on the sidelines of June’s quarterly EU leaders summit, telling Mr Macron that Europe’s destiny would play out between the two of them, “the populist and the European”.

Mr Orban told Mr Macron that there would “only be two winners” from the EU elections next May - himself and the French President - but that he would be “the biggest winner of all”.

The encounter, which is understood to have irritated senior French officials, is typical of Mr Orban’s confrontational style which is seeing him forging nationalist alliances across Europe to in a bid to dethrone the EU’s liberal establishment.

The increasingly raw divisions of European politics were exposed last week when MEPs voted by a margin of 448-197 to demand Hungary face ‘Article 7’ proceedings for the alleged anti-democratic behaviour.