Hungary's Orban rejects 'Sovietization' by Brussels, defends nation state
At a commemoration of a 1956 anti-Communist uprising, Hungary's right-wing leader Viktor Orban said his country must stand up to Europe's "Sovietization" and defend its borders against mass migration.
Orban, a critic of the European Union and an early opponent of the recent migration wave into the continent, said freedom in Europe depended on the nation state and Christian traditions.
"People who love their freedom must save Brussels from Sovietization, from people who want to tell us who we should live with in our countries," the prime minister said to cheers from a crowd of several thousand.
"We want to be a European nation not a nationality within Europe," he said.
Along with other ex-Communist countries in eastern Europe, Hungary opposes a policy that would require all EU states to take in some of the hundreds of thousands of mainly Muslim migrants seeking asylum in the bloc after arriving last year.