Hungarian foreign minister Péter Szijjártó has warned that the European Union is pushing for more immigration at a time when radical Islamic extremists are returning from the ruins of the Islamic State caliphate “by the hundreds”, and this “must be stopped”.

Speaking following a meeting of the Budapest Process forum in Istanbul, Turkey, the Fidesz statesman said that mass migration posed “extreme risks” to national security and public safety in Europe — but that the representatives of the European Commission, the EU’s unelected governing executive, “did their best to highlight how good migration is for Europe” during the conference.

Hungary and the rest of the Visegrad bloc of Central European countries, joined by the national populist governments of Austria and Italy, declined to sign the meeting’s closing statements and action plan on the grounds that they believed it would exacerbate migration trends, noting: “These countries do not at all accept the position that migration is good and it should be promoted.”

He further noted the “alarming” arrest of former Islamic State members in Bosnia-Herzegovina and North Macedonia, in a pocket of European territory just between the European Union’s south-east member-states and the bloc’s heartland.

Szijjártó warned that such people are returning to Europe “by the hundreds” now their physical caliphate has been all but annihilated, and “This must be stopped.”

EU Launches Chemical Sales Crackdown as ISIS Jihadis Flock Back to Europe https://t.co/YgdMxoIAht — Breitbart London (@BreitbartLondon) February 19, 2019

The Hungarian’s intervention comes just as the British mainstream media is turning unrepentant jihadi bride Shamima Begum into something of a cause célèbre, with left-liberal and “centre-right” journalists, lawyers, and politicians arguing strongly for her to be taken in by the United Kingdom with her foreign-born child.

Polls show an overwhelming 78 percent majority of people do not want to let in the 19-year-old extremist, who has endorsed the Manchester Arena suicide bombing — in which an Islamist refugee’s UK-born son slaughtered dozens of children, teens, and parents at a concert — as justified “retaliation”.

Home Secretary Sajid Javid has stipped Begum of citizenship, which he is empowered to do in the case of citizens whose presence in Britain would “not be conducive to the public good”, provided they have alternative citizenship or eligibility for alternative citizenship elsewhere — but may cave in to leftist demands to take her in now her mother’s native Bangladesh has indicated it will deny her citizenship rights.

Hundreds of former ISIS fighters and their brides have already returned to the United Kingdom, with the authorities prosecuting only a tiny minority of them and allowing many to “roam free” without even a surveillance order to monitor their activity.

UK Facing ISIS Bride Influx as More Than a Dozen Show Up at Syrian Camps https://t.co/xwxkCUeUF1 — Breitbart London (@BreitbartLondon) February 21, 2019

Follow Jack Montgomery on Twitter: @JackBMontgomery