Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán no longer supports Manfred Weber's bid to be European Commission president.

Speaking in Budapest alongside Austrian Vice Chancellor Heinz-Christian Strache, leader of the far-right Freedom Party (FPÖ), Orbán criticized Weber's pledge not to accept the position of Commission president if his success depended on the support of Hungary's ruling Fidesz party.

Weber is the lead candidate of the center-right European People's Party (EPP), which suspended Orbán's Fidesz over rule-of-law concerns in March. Orbán, whose party has a close relationship with Weber's Bavarian Christian Social Union (CSU), initially supported the German MEP's candidacy.

Asked in late March what he would do if he needed Fidesz votes to become Commission president, Weber told German public broadcaster ZDF "I would not take up office because I do not want to be elected by the far right ... I want to make clear that the center is the dominant force, not the fringes."

The Hungarian leader on Monday declared that Weber's comments mean he can no longer back his candidacy.

"If someone insults a country like this, then the prime minister of that country can't support such a person's candidacy," Orbán said. "We are looking for the appropriate candidate."

The president of the European Commission is nominated by a vote of the European Council, and confirmed in a vote in the European Parliament.

The EPP downplayed Orbán's announcement.

“Manfred Weber would not be the first president of the Commission elected without the votes of Fidesz,” an EPP group spokesperson said, pointing out the Hungarian leader did not vote in favor of Jean-Claude Juncker for the post in 2014.

Within the center-right bloc, some of Orbán's critics se his withdrawal of support for Weber as confirmation that the EPP has taken the right approach to the Hungarian ruling party.

"To me it proves that the EPP decision to freeze Fidesz did actually go far enough and did do the trick," Petri Sarvamaa, a Finnish EPP member of the European Parliament, told POLITICO. "In the words of Joey Ramone: 'Glad to see you go go go go, goodbye!'"

Finland's National Coalition Party (Kokoomus), of which Sarvamaa is a member, was among the EPP members formally pushing for the expulsion of Fidesz.

"Hopefully this doesn't harm Weber's campaign ... actually I think it works the other way around," Sarvamaa said.

Weber has faced a barrage of criticism from his opponents on the campaign trail regarding his relationship with Orbán, and the Hungarian prime minister's decision to publicly distance himself could help ease the pressure on the German.

But Orbán's comment that he is looking for another "appropriate" candidate is sure to cause unease in Weber's camp at a time when many EU leaders are lukewarm at best about his candidacy.

Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, the leader of the CSU’s sister party the CDU, told Reuters Monday that “with his behavior in the last few days and the meeting with [Italian Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini], Orbán has given a clear sign that he will leave” the EPP.

Orbán's far-right alliance dreams

Orbán also told reporters Monday that he wants the European Parliament to adopt what he had called the "Austrian model" in an interview with Austria's Kleine Zeitung on Sunday: an alliance between the center right and far right. In Austria, the FPÖ governs as part of a coalition with the center-right Austrian People's Party (ÖVP).

If it is possible in Austria "for the center-right ruling party to work together with the right-wing patriotic party, then why can't this happen on the European level as well?" Orbán said.

The chance of such a coalition becoming reality is unlikely. Mainstream European parties have traditionally worked together in the European Parliament, and EPP lead candidate Weber has rejected the idea of cooperating with the far right.

Austrian far-right leader Strache, meanwhile, praised Orbán as an actor on the European stage.

The Hungarian prime minister worked "with heart and character for his people," Strache said as he stood next to Orbán. "When we work together, we work in the interest of both countries."

Strache called on the EPP to reconsider its "exclusion policy" toward the far right, saying that Europe needs a "strong alliance" to protect it from "migration ... and also Islamization."

He then invoked the so-called Great Replacement theory‚ a far-right conspiracy often also alluded to by Orbán's Fidesz. The theory claims that white Europeans are systematically being replaced by mass migration from outside of Europe, saying the "native population has or threatens to become a minority" in some European cities. The concept was cited in a manifesto allegedly written by the man charged with the Christchurch killings at mosques in New Zealand.

Scholars have dismissed this theory as based on distorted statistics.

Orbán's meeting with Strache came days after the Hungarian leader met with Italian Interior Minister Salvini, leader of the far-right League, and a week before the Hungarian prime minister's planned meeting with U.S. President Donald Trump in Washington.

Maïa de La Baume contributed reporting.