Hungarian Minister of Foreign Affairs Péter Szijjártó and European Trade Commissioner Cecilia Malmström | Olivier Hoslet/EPA Hungary: European Parliament hearing is ‘witch hunt’ Budapest government also likens committee meeting to communist show trial.

Budapest on Monday branded an upcoming European Parliament hearing on Hungary a cross between a witch hunt and a communist-style show trial.

The Parliament's committee on civil liberties, justice and home affairs will hear from rights activists, an academic and Hungarian Foreign Minister Péter Szijjártó in a session entitled "the situation in Hungary" on Thursday.

The hearing follows growing tension between Prime Minister Viktor Orbán's government and the European Union. In October, the European Commission stepped up a legal procedure against Hungary over a new law on NGOs that, among other measures, obliged some of them to register and label themselves as “supported from abroad.” Budapest has also been at loggerheads with Brussels for refusing to take part in a mandatory EU relocation scheme for refugees.

“The Hungarian government has been through some of these hearings for the past couple of years, and we all know that... it's a delicate mixture of witch hunt and a show trial, what is going to happen,” Hungarian government spokesman Zoltán Kovács told reporters in Brussels on Monday.

“If you are familiar with the witch hunt cases of the Middle Ages, you know what they were about. If you're familiar with the communist way of show trials back in the 1950s, you also know what it was about,” Kovács added.

He said the government would have its say but it had not been informed of the exact issues to be discussed.

"We haven't seen the proper agenda, the questions, the issues, that are going to be on the program,” he said. “We also strongly believe it's an intrusion in the domestic affairs of Hungary."