Hungary PM Orban lambasts Croatia counterpart over migrants Published duration 2 October 2015 Related Topics Europe migrant crisis

image copyright AFP image caption Thousands of migrants try to get into Europe every day, often making perilous sea journeys

Hungarian PM Viktor Orban has said his Croatian counterpart is a leftist mouthpiece tasked with attacking Hungary, as a row over migrants grows.

He said Zoran Milanovic was an envoy of the Socialist International, whose members believed the current influx of migrants was "a good thing".

Tensions between the two nations have risen since Hungary erected a barbed wire fence on the Serbian border.

This forced migrants to go to Croatia, prompting criticism from Zagreb.

Hungary completed the construction of the fence along its 175km-long (109 miles) border with Serbia in September, and is now building a similar barrier on its border with Croatia.

Thousands of migrants - many of them fleeing conflicts in the Middle East and North Africa - have been arriving in the three countries as they seek to move to wealthier EU nations.

Last month, the 28-member EU agreed plans to relocate 120,000 migrants from Hungary, Greece and Italy.

More from the BBC:

Speaking to local media on Friday, Mr Orban said: "We don't consider what the Croatian prime minister says to be the opinion of the Croatian people."

image copyright EPA image caption Mr Orban has repeatedly stated that Europe's borders are threatened by migrants, who are "breaking the doors"

"When they hear the Croatian prime minister, I ask Hungarians not to hear a Croatian man but an envoy of the Socialist International who is supposed to attack Hungary," he added.

Mr Milanovic's Social Democratic Party is a member of the Socialist International.

Mr Orban has repeatedly stated that Europe's borders are threatened by migration, saying this is "breaking the doors" of the continent.

Last month, the government in Budapest was strongly criticised by the EU after Hungarian police used tear gas and water cannon to stop migrants breaking through the fence from Serbia.

Meanwhile, Mr Milanovic on Friday described Hungary's moves to erect a barbed wire fence on the Croatian border "nasty and inefficient".

"There is no point in talking about closing the border. You cannot close it," he told the BBC.

"If Hungary wishes to roll more rolls of barbed wire, then so be it. People are always able to circumvent it."

Eastern European countries are stressing the need to protect the EU's external borders and distinguish between economic migrants and refugees, says the BBC's Chris Morris in Brussels.

Meanwhile German Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere repeated calls to limit the number of refugees coming into Europe.

He proposed that the EU create "generous contingents where we take people from crisis regions into Europe without traffickers and distribute them across Europe".