Even though Hungary’s putative share would only be 1,294 people, Viktor Orban, the country’s self-styled strongman prime minister, is emphatic that his country will not be dragooned into accepting either the refugees or an EU policy which he recently condemned as “self-destructive and naïve”.

“These quotas are a just bad idea. They don’t work and we won’t accept them,” Zoltan Kovacs, the chief spokesman of the Hungarian government, told The Sunday Telegraph.

“All these quotas do is encourage more people to come to Europe and demonstrate the failings of the EU institutions."

The referendum has been designed to mobilise Mr Orban’s political support at home but also to spearhead what he has called a “counter-revolution” against Brussels for trying to foist both migrants and western, multicultural values onto the countries of the former Eastern bloc.