BUDAPEST: European Union leaders and Hungarian-American billionaire George Soros are seeking a “new, mixed, Muslimised Europe,” Hungary’s anti-migration prime minister said on Saturday.

Prime Minister Viktor Orban said during a visit to Romania that Hungary’s border fences, supported by other Central European countries, are the barriers to the EU-Soros effort to increase Muslim migration.

Orban also said that while Hungary opposed taking in migrants “who could change the country’s cultural identity,” he said that under his leadership Hungary would remain a place where “Western European Christians will always be able to find security.”

Orban, who will seek a fourth term as prime minister in April 2018, said Hungary’s opposition parties were no match for his government.

“In the upcoming campaign, first of all we have to confront external powers,” Orban said at a cultural festival in Baile Tusnad, Romania. “We have to stand our ground against the Soros mafia network and the Brussels bureaucrats. And, during the next nine months, we will have to fight against the media they operate.”

Soros has become a key target of Orban and his government. Recent legislation seeks to close or expel the Budapest-based Central European University, founded by Soros in 1991. There are also new rules about non-governmental organisations funded at least partly from abroad. Critics say that the new regulations stigmatise the NGOs, many of which are backed by Soros’ Open Society Foundations, and are meant to delegitimise them.

Published in Dawn, July 23rd, 2017