The European commission has accused Viktor Orbán’s government of a propagating a “shocking” and “ludicrous conspiracy theory”, after Hungary launched a poster campaign targeting Jean-Claude Juncker.

Opening a new front against Brussels a few months before European elections, the poster shows the European commission president alongside the Hungarian-American philanthropist George Soros, a familiar target in Hungary.

“You have the right to know what Brussels is planning to do,” the poster says. On its official Facebook page, the Hungarian government says the poster is part of an information campaign to tell the public about Brussels’ migration plans, which it claims “fundamentally endangered Hungary’s safety”.

Although the government has previously run a “Stop Brussels” campaign, the decision to use an image of Junker is an escalation in the Orbán government’s public relations war with the EU’s most senior leaders.

It also exposes the rift in the centre-right European People’s party in the European parliament, which counts Juncker and Orbán, as members.

In an unusually forceful rebuttal against a member state, Juncker’s chief spokesman, Margaritis Schinas, said the commission had made a commitment “to fight disinformation and fake news” and this case was no exception.

“The Hungarian government campaign beggars belief,” he said. “It is shocking that such a ludicrous conspiracy theory has reached the mainstream to the extent it has. There is no conspiracy. Hungarians deserve facts not fiction.”

Juncker and Orbán have long had awkward relations. In 2014 Orbán, along with the then UK prime minister, David Cameron, failed in an attempt to block Juncker from becoming commission president. Juncker once met Orbán with the jokey greeting “hello, dictator” and playfully tapped his face. But the animus on Hungary’s side deepened when the EU forced through mandatory refugee quotas in 2015 at the height of a humanitarian crisis.

Hungary has always refused to take refugees under the quotas and continues to block an EU law that proposes a permanent redistribution system for asylum seekers. The poster refers to this theme, stating: “They want to introduce compulsory relocation quotas.”

The government campaign also accuses Juncker and Soros of wanting “to weaken member states’ rights to protect their own borders” and claims “they want …migrants’ visas”. EU leaders have repeatedly stressed their desire to strengthen Europe’s borders in recent years, a policy that many diplomats say was influenced by Orbán’s approach.

It was not immediately clear what the Hungarian government meant by “migrants’ visas”. The EU has a little-used blue-card scheme, modelled on the US green card that is intended to attract skilled labour. Under the scheme, member states decide how many non-EU migrants they admit.

The commission rejected the Hungarian claims. “There is no ‘they’, only the European Union with Hungary sitting at the table,” Schinas said. “It is not true that the EU supports or undermines border protection. Quite the contrary. And there are zero plans for so-called humanitarian visas. Member states decide to what level they want to accept legal migration.”

Orbán was re-elected for a third straight term last April, after a campaign dominated by immigration. A long-term critic of the EU, Orbán has accused NGOs and critical media of being part of a plot orchestrated by Soros to send millions of people to Hungary.

In recent weeks, Orbán has spoken of his hopes that the next European parliament will be dominated by anti-immigration parties.



