Hungary PM hails anti-immigrant Italian-Polish effort

Europe's anti-immigration forces could be strengthened by an Italian-Polish initiative to form a right-wing alliance for upcoming European Parliament elections, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban said on Thursday.

Orban, one of the European Union's toughest opponents of mass immigration, said he would like to see anti-immigration parties gain a majority in the May elections.

Italy's deputy prime minister, Matteo Salvini, said during a visit to Warsaw on Wednesday that Italy and Poland should join forces in a euro-sceptic alliance to contest the European vote.

"The Polish-Italian or Warsaw-Rome alliance is one of the greatest developments that this year could have started with," Orban told a news conference, describing Salvini as a "hero" for stopping migration at the shores of Italy.

"I am pinning great hopes on this."

Orban said he was "fed up" with the fact that whenever the European People's Party, to which his ruling Fidesz party also belongs, looks for allies, it looks to the left, parties he called pro-immigration.

TRT World's Shamim Chowdhury has more.

'Rome-Warsaw axis'

"There should be a Rome-Warsaw axis, which is able to govern, is responsible and is against immigration and is willing to work together with the anti-immigration forces within the EPP," Orban said.

The Hungarian prime minister, however, pledged allegiance to the EPP, saying: "As long as we are there, and I hope this will be a long time, we will remain loyal to our party family."

Orban said Hungary's goal under his leadership was to gain an anti-immigrant majority in the European Parliament, then in the executive European Commission, and later, as national elections change the continent's political landscape, the European Council, where national leaders make the most important EU decisions.

For more on this story, TRT World spoke with Wojciech Przybylski, Editor-in-Chief of Visegrad Insight.

No compromise possible with Germany

Orban said on Thursday no compromise was possible with Germany over migration despite what he called "constant pressure" from Berlin on his government to take in immigrants.

"German politics does not respect Hungarians' decision not to become an immigrant nation," Orban told a news conference. "I sense especially from the German media, sometimes in a very gross way, that they exert pressure on us to follow them on their path [of admitting immigrants], and we do not wish to."

"I don't see any compromise possible here."