Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orban says his country will open its arms to west Europeans fleeing mass immigration and “the lords of globalist politics”.

“We shall let in true refugees”, Mr Orban told a cheering audience: “Germans, Dutch, French and Italians, terrified politicians and journalists who here in Hungary want to find the Europe they have lost in their homelands.”

The populist leader has served as the de facto leader of the central and eastern European countries which have resisted the open borders policies of the European Union (EU) and leading member-states in the west of the continent.

Globalist politicians, Mr Orban contended, are seeking to “sweep away a democracy of debate and replace it with a democracy of [political] correctness”, where “true power, decisions and influence [are] not held by elected governments, but [by] unelected global networks, media gurus and international organisations.”

He cited Britain’s vote to leave the European Union and Donald Trump’s election in the United States as episodes in a wider popular revolt against the “arrogance and condescension” of global elites by ordinary people whose “mouths had been gagged” for too long.

He claimed that history’s departure from “the course marked out for it” in 2016 “mocked the prophets of liberal politics”, who have responded as though “the people are a danger to democracy”.

“This is how the world’s most bizarre coalition of people smugglers, human rights activists and elite European politicians came into existence, specifically to deliberately bring millions of migrants into Europe,” he said.

The Fidesz leader predicted that 2017 would be another year of conflict with the EU, as “Brussels [attempts] to seize further powers” over migration and taxation, among other things.

He also warned against the activities of non-governmental organisations funded from abroad and seeking to exert influence on local politics: “Here there are large predators swimming in the water, and this is the transnational empire of George Soros.”