“Orbán continues to have a seat at the European Council table & veto rights to undermine Europe’s sovereignty … Untenable, unacceptable, un-European,” Guy Verhofstadt, the former Belgian Prime Minister and a senior member of the European Parliament, wrote on Twitter.

You know better than anyone that in Hungary my government follows a zero-tolerance policy on both antisemitism and racism,” Orban said in response, according to a letter published on Twitter by his political director Balazs Orban.īut the leader’s speech has prompted an angry reaction across Europe, with critics of his regime demanding EU leaders openly condemn the right-wing Prime Minister. “You can’t be serious about accusing me of racism after 20 years of working together. ATTILA KISBENEDEK/AFP/AFP via Getty Images Orban spoke at an edition of the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) conference in Hungary in May, and is set to speak again at its Texas conference next month. She added that Orban’s lurch toward authoritarianism during his 12-year stint as Hungary’s Prime Minister had previously eroded her support. Hegedus, one of Orban’s closest aides, said the speech contradicted her values and made her position untenable. He warned that “Islamic civilization” is “constantly moving towards Europe” and that in the future, “those whom we do not want to let in will have to be stopped at western borders,” regardless of the country’s membership of the Schengen Area of open borders across 26 European countries. “This is why we have always fought: We are willing to mix with one another, but we do not want to become peoples of mixed race,” Orban said.

Orban told a crowd that Europeans do not want to mix with people from outside of the continent. He was also denounced by the International Auschwitz Committee after comments in the same speech that were interpreted as a joke about the use of gas chambers against Jewish people in Nazi Germany. Zsuzsa Hegedus, who served as an adviser to Orban for two decades, quit Tuesday over what she called Orban’s “illiberal turn,” describing his comments in Romania on Saturday as a “pure Nazi text worthy of (Nazi propagandist) Goebbels,” according to her resignation letter published by Hungarian outlet HVG. Hungary’s hardline nationalist leader Viktor Orban is facing international condemnation after making remarks on race and multiculturalism that were slammed as a “pure Nazi text” by his longtime aide.

Pure hockey