Former Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton has scolded British Conservative Party politicians for backing the anti-mass migration Prime Minister of Hungary and demanded that Europe and U.S. deal with migration crises with “respect to human rights”.

“I hope the people of Europe and the European Union will resist the backsliding we’re seeing in the east,” Clinton told the Bonavero Institute of Human Rights at Oxford University on Tuesday.

“It’s disheartening to watch conservatives in Brussels vote to shield Viktor Orbán from censure, including British Tories.

“They have come a long way from the party of [Winston] Churchill and [Margaret] Thatcher.”

The former Secretary of State to President Barack Obama made the condemnation in relation to Tory Members of European Parliament voting against imposing sanctions on Hungary at the  EU’s parliament last month for alleged breach of “European values” after Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orbán outlawed the facilitation of illegal migration.

The former presidential nominee was at Mansfield College’s Bonavero Institute to commemorate former first lady Eleanor Roosevelt’s role in drafting the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

During her speech on the “rise of illiberalism”, Clinton, who is against the UK leaving the EU, also compared what she called Europe’s “slide towards autocracy” to be “as grave a threat to the European project as the financial crisis or Brexit”.

“It’s also a threat to Nato,” she claimed.

The Democrat also weighed in on Europe’s and the U.S.’s approach to stemming the flow of illegal migrants, saying the “challenge of migration” must be handled “with courage and compassion”.

“Here in Europe I add my voice to those warning of the risks of giving up on Schengen and the great benefits freedom of movement have delivered,” Clinton said of the bloc’s internal open borders system, which had been temporarily suspended along some national borders since 2015 in response to stemming the mass flows of people arriving from the global south, with identity checks at borders still in place in response to ongoing terrorism concerns.

“I’m not talking about open borders,” claimed Clinton, who said in 2013 that she dreamt of a North and South American “hemispheric common market, with open trade and open borders”, adding that immigration laws should be “enforced with fairness and respect for human rights.”

“Of course, security and rule of law must be upheld.”