Countries which “do not want to open the door” to Muslim migrants and try to “protect Christianity” could “destroy Europe”, claims the EU’s longest-serving foreign minister.

Veteran europhile Jean Asselborn, who has been in his post since 2004, made the extraordinary remarks in an interview with the German-language Tiroler Tageszeitung newspaper, which is published in Austria.

Asked for his thoughts on Central European countries fighting the EU’s attempts to impose compulsory migrant quotas across the bloc, the 68-year-old declared that “countries that do not want to open the door to refugees from the south, who speak Arabic and are Muslim, ignore the values … the EU actually represents.”

A former deputy prime minister to current President of the European Commission Jean-Claude Juncker in his native Luxembourg, Asselborn insisted the EU is “a project based on values”, and that failing to bring Hungary, Poland, and other member-states which do not want to accept migrant quotas to heel is “something that can destroy Europe”.

WATCH: ‘Swedes Must Integrate With Migrants’ Says Government-Backed Multicultural Propaganda https://t.co/gRPEhDsqCW pic.twitter.com/sa6RGjKQ5S — Breitbart London (@BreitbartLondon) September 19, 2016

Asked for his thoughts on the success of populist, anti-mass migration parties in the Czech Republic, Austria, and even Germany to a lesser extent, Asselborn said that “If there are more traditional right-wing parties in Europe, that’s not a problem, nor if it’s more social democratic leftist.

“But if someone is concerned with protecting Christianity against Islam and therefore closing the borders and not letting anybody else in … You should just call it extremism. And those who believe in Europe … must fight it.”

Orban: “Our greatest threat is the indifferent silence of a European elite who are renouncing their Christian roots” https://t.co/2KoLLOXJqy — Jack Montgomery ن (@JackBMontgomery) October 12, 2017

The Luxembourger’s stance provides a stark contrast with that of the de facto leader of the anti-mass migration parties in Europe, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán.

Speaking at a conference on the persecution of Christians in the Middle East earlier this month, the conservative pin-up warned that “the greatest danger threatening [Europe] today is the indifferent silence of the European elite who are renouncing their Christian roots, despite the fact that the fate of Middle Eastern Christians should wake Europe up to the fact that, no matter how unbelievable it may still seem, what happened there could also happen to us.”

Far from denouncing leaders who wish to defend European Christianity as “extremists”, Prime Minister Orbán suggested that it was a “group of Europe’s intellectual and political leaders [who] want to create a mixed society that would completely change the continent’s cultural and ethnic identity, and Christian nature, within just a few generations” who are the real threat.

Follow Jack Montgomery on Twitter: @JackBMontgomery