Hungary’s Viktor Orbán has congratulated Italy’s Matteo Salvini for calling out the NGOs ferrying migrants from Africa to Europe as “white-collar people-smugglers”, slammed the EU for backing them, and warned that “everyone should be wary of the idea of Islam being part of any European country”.

Speaking at a Budapest conference commemorating the late German Chancellor Helmut Kohl, who in later life enjoyed a much closer relationship with Orbán than his former protégé Angela Merkel, the Hungarian stateman stressed the failures of the European Union over the last five years.

He singled out the EU’s latest pan-continental budget for particular criticism, saying it was “exactly like the European Commission itself: pro-immigration and pro-migrant”.

The essence of the budget, he explained, “is that it takes money from European people and gives it to migrants and NGOs. It is as if George Soros wrote it – and perhaps he did.”

The Fidesz leader praised Rome’s new populist government for speaking out against the NGOs operating so-called ‘rescue’ ships in the Mediterranean, many of which are funded by money from Soros organisatiuons.

“The Italians have finally declared something that we all know: that the NGOs are in fact white-collar people smugglers.

“The [European] Commission’s budget seeks to finance them, meaning that it seeks to support the coalition of white-collar and blue-collar people-smugglers. This is what the Italians have stated,” he asserted.

Nearly 70 Per Cent of Italians Back Salvini’s Stand Against EU on Migrant Ferries https://t.co/gYDmsRmXNe — Breitbart London (@BreitbartLondon) June 17, 2018

Orbán laid responsibility for Brexit, for example, at the feet of the unelected European Commission led by Jean-Claude Juncker, which acts as the bloc’s executive and sole initiator of EU-level legislation.

The conservative premier said the appointment of Juncker as President of the Commission over the objections of the British government — Hungary was the only EU member-state which supported the Brits — placed “dynamite under the relationship between the United Kingdom and the European Union”, while the bloc’s failure to deal with the migrant crisis “lit the fuse”.

More broadly, the Hungarian prime minister said Juncker’s “ominous” decision to run a “political commission” had proved to be a “cardinal error”, allowing it to become “an instrument which the large states [such as Germany and France] use against the smaller ones”, attempting to force them to adopt liberal policies on mass migration through a form of “blackmail”.

“I could say that [Brussels] is turning into Moscow,” he suggested, in reference to the way the old Soviet capital bullied and manipulated Communist satellites.

“In 2019 this must be brought to an end. This Commission must go, and we will need a Commission and a Parliament that reflects the new European realities.”

EU Chief Jean-Claude Juncker Defies Protests to Deliver Heartfelt Defence of Karl Marx https://t.co/LXTrmbYpGX — Breitbart London (@BreitbartLondon) May 5, 2018

Looking ahead to the European Parliament elections in 2019, he cautioned politicians who have endorsed and facilitated mass migration not to try and impose their worldview on countries like Hungary, and to consider the long-term consequences of importing large numbers of people from the Islamic world.

“There is one unsolicited piece of advice we can give, because in this Hungary has historical experience: everyone should be wary of the idea of Islam being part of any European country,” he warned.

“It is as well to know the reply of Islam. We Hungarians know what it is. If Islam is part of Germany, for instance, in Muslim terms this means that Germany is part of Islam. This is something that is worth pondering.”

Orban, and his fellow Hungarians’ attitude to Islamic immigration may in part be informed by an understanding o their own history. Hungary was overrun and partly annexed by the Ottoman Turks in the Middle Ages, who established hundreds of Islamic schools and mosques and a number of armed garrisons in the region, only being driven out after around 150 years of warfare.

Hungarian Deputy PM: ‘Islamic Invasion’ Will Reduce Europeans to ‘Minority in Our Own Continent’ https://t.co/DM31IexDMN — Breitbart London (@BreitbartLondon) May 26, 2018

Follow Jack Montgomery on Twitter: @JackBMontgomery