Hungary's Prime minister Viktor Orban and Croatia's Prime minister Tihomir Oreskovic after a meeting on the Balkan migration route in Vienna | Joe Klamar/AFP via Getty Images Viktor Orbán: Arm Libya to fight ISIL and migration There’s a need for ‘defensive lines’ to protect EU’s external borders, Hungarian leader said at summit on refugees.

VIENNA — Viktor Orbán on Saturday called on Europe to drop its arms embargo against Libya and empower a new government in Tripoli to fight both illegal migration and ISIL, the Hungarian prime minister’s latest controversial proposal to bring the refugee crisis under control.

Speaking after a summit on refugees in the Austrian capital, Orbán also repeated his call for the European Union to erect a “giant refugee city” in Libya, where asylum claims could be processed. Libya is one of the main gateways for refugees heading across the Mediterranean to Europe.

The Hungarian leader, the most outspoken critic of Europe’s refugee policies, appears to have won little immediate support for his suggestion. The provocative proposals seemed aimed at his detractors, including Germany’s Angela Merkel, who argue that Hungary’s hardline approach to the crisis will do little to solve it.

“These are not nice things, but these are necessary things,” Orbán said of the tight border controls and other measures Budapest has undertaken to keep migrants at bay.

Leaders described Saturday’s discussion on new ways to tackle the crisis as both frank and to the point. In a role reversal, Merkel, who has often clashed with Greece’s Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras on economic issues, locked arms with him in urging a more progressive refugee policy.

“We see a completely different future for mankind” — Viktor Orbán

Yet Austria and its Balkan allies were resolute in defending their tough measures.

“The usual Euro blah blah was out of the discussion,” Orbán said. “It was very Central European.”

European Council President Donald Tusk also joined the fray, saying on his way into the meeting that it was essential the Balkan route remain “closed for good.”

Orbàn cast the debate in stark terms, describing a fundamental philosophical divide in the EU between leaders who believe borders can be protected and those who think unfettered mobility is inevitable, even desirable.

“We see a completely different future for mankind,” he said.

Orbán’s comments underscored the continued tensions within Europe over how to combat the crisis. Though the situation has calmed over the past year — due both to the closure of the so-called Balkan route from Greece to Austria and the EU’s refugee pact with Turkey — leaders warned that it could explode again if Europe doesn’t take further steps.

“If we fail on this issue, if there’s no progress or if the Turkey deal collapses, then the European project of integration will face a massive test,” said Austrian Chancellor Christian Kern, the summit’s host.

Kern, defending the cap Vienna has placed on new arrivals, noted that if the rest of the EU adopted the same ceiling as Austria, more than two million people could take refuge in Europe.

While the leaders at Saturday’s summit agreed the Balkan route should remain closed, they warned that a collapse of the EU’s refugee deal with Turkey remained the biggest threat and called for contingency plans if that happens.

Turkey has generally honored its commitments under the deal, but ongoing political turmoil in the country as well as differences between Ankara and the EU threaten to undo it.

The difficulty will be to find consensus over a plan B. The Vienna meeting, which included leaders from 10 countries, including Merkel and Tsipras, was primarily an attempt to repair the divisions between capitals most affected by the crisis.

The core of the group, known as the West Balkan Conference, is comprised of countries from southeastern Europe, including non-EU members such as Albania and Serbia. In February, at Vienna’s urging, the forum agreed to close the Balkan route.

Germany and Greece, both of which opposed the move, were excluded, exacerbating tensions. Athens bore the brunt of the closure, with about 50,000 migrants left stranded Greece. So far, other EU countries have only accepted about 4,000 refugees from Greece.

Though Merkel opposed the border closures at the time, she has more recently acknowledged that they helped reduce the flow of refugees to Germany. Nonetheless, about 50,000 refugees have managed to illegally make their way to Germany since the closure, proof, the German leader argued during Saturday’s summit, that the plan is far from perfect.

Berlin’s prescription for the crisis has been to focus on curbing illegal immigration and human smuggling while continuing to allow legal migration. Yet that plan relies on the willingness of other EU countries to accept refugees, something that remains elusive as some countries flat-out refuse to take any.

Merkel repeated that Germany would continue to accept the transfer of refugees under its allocation commitments, including from Greece and Italy.

“Our goal must be to halt illegal immigration to the degree that’s possible,” Merkel said in a brief statement after the summit.

The biggest flashpoint remains Greece. While Turkey has done a better job of patrolling the Aegean, about 100 new refugees arrive in Greece every day. So far, Greece has only send about 500 of the arrivals back to Turkey.

Under the deal, Turkey agreed to accept back those refugees who arrive in Greece illegally from its shores but the process remains complicated and slow.

Greece isn’t the only problem, however. About 7,000 refugees are stuck on Serbia’s border with Hungary, a situation aid groups have warrned it's becoming a humanitarian crisis.

Orbán said “traditional humanitarian efforts” over the winter should help prevent a catastrophe, but emphasized there's still a need for “defensive lines” to protect the EU’s external borders.

“Merkel said she doesn’t like political speech with military overtones,” he said. “It’s difficult not to use military language.”