Conservative Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán and populist Italian Interior Minister Matteo Salvini have attacked globalist French President Emmanuel Macron as “the leader of pro-migration parties in Europe today”.
At a joint press conference in Milan, Italy, on Tuesday, the two pro-sovereignty politicians singled out former Socialist party member Macron as their political enemy when they announced they are forming an anti-mass migration front ahead of European Parliament elections to challenge his vision for the European Union.
“He leads the European force that backs migration, he’s the leader of those parties who back migration to Europe, and on the other side there’s us who want to stop illegal migration,” said Prime Minister Orbán, according to Politico.
The Hungarian premier added that he believed Macron, who has yet to join a European Parliament group, wants to “blow up” the centre-right European People’s Party to which Mr Orbán belongs “in the same way he has done with the French party system”.
Italian Interior Minister and League Party leader Salvini also castigated the French leader “who at home is at record low popularity” for “spend[ing] his time preaching lessons to foreign governments” but offers little support to Rome, pointing to Macron’s hypocrisy for expecting Italy to keep her seaports opened to unlimited numbers of illegal migrants from Africa while reinforcing his nation’s borders at the Ventimiglia crossing with Italy.
The French president has attacked countries which refuse to capitulate to EU demands to accept redistributed migrants from the third world, saying those who benefit from the bloc but “claim national self-interest when it comes to the issue of migrants” should have sanctions imposed on them.
Macron has directly criticised Italy for its “cynicism and irresponsibility” in turning away migrant transport vessels operated by pro-mass migration NGOs, like the Aquarius ship operated by NGO partner to George Soros’s Open Society Foundations’ Médicins Sans Frontiéres.
When asked by the presenter of BBC Radio 4’s Today programme to clarify Mr Orbán’s criticism of Macron, Hungary’s government spokesman Zoltán Kovács said: “What we’ve seen coming from Mr Macron is indeed a pro-migration, a non-national identity-based Europe. A European United States which [Hungary] strongly rejects.”
Presenter Nick Robinson challenged Mr Kovács whether a president of France, a nation with a strong identity, could be anti-national identity.
“If he is against national identity, he is refusing for Hungary to sticking up for its national identity — why is it okay for France?” the Hungarian government spokesman responded.
“Nobody ever agreed on a migration — especially an illegal migration — policy in the European Union. You have to keep in mind that collectively rejecting and swiping away European standpoints on illegal migration is not simply unjust and unfair but it’s fully a double standard. That’s what we see coming from France.
“That’s what Salvini said yesterday. All that we get from France is ‘more Europe’. It’s double standards and the rejection of other nations’ perspective.”
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