Orban accused of invoking Holocaust as he blasts EU refugee plan

Hungary's Prime Minister Viktor Orban blasted the EU's plan to share hosting of asylum seekers more equitably Friday, comparing it to wartime deportations. 

"Let's say there are migrants in Germany who don't want to come here. Do they catch and collect them, put them in wagons in Germany, haul them over to us, and unload them here?" Orban said. 

"Any country that does not allow migrants to enter will be compelled to do so by force," he said.

The populist leader's long-running feuds with Brussels over migration and democratic values have regularly seen him draw controversial analogies.

But opposition MEP Katalin Cseh slammed Orban's latest comments. 

"He just can't stop with the disgraceful Holocaust parallels," said Cseh, of the centrist Momentum party, on Twitter.

Orban has described the EU as a modern-day version of the Soviet Union, and last month evoked Adolf Hitler among a list of leaders who "dreamed of European unity".

Hungary has long been opposed to hosting asylum seekers via mandatory quotas and -- along with Poland -- voted against the proposal.

In a preliminary deal reached earlier this month, EU countries that refuse to host asylum seekers would be required to pay 20,000 euros ($21,000) per person into a fund managed by Brussels.

On Friday, Orban blamed his long-time bete-noire, Hungarian-born US billionaire George Soros and his son Alexander for the latest EU plan, saying "the Soros empire forced the migrant quota down the throats of Europeans with a coup-like, quick decision."

The Hungarian hardliner has erected barbed-wire border fences and closed refugee camps. The central European country also no longer accepts asylum applications within Hungary.

In 2016 Orban tried to have the constitution changed by referendum to bar the country from taking in migrants, but was narrowly defeated.

AFP