Romania's foreign minister Bogdan Aurescu slammed Hungarian far-right prime minister Viktor Orban for his "anti-EU" rhetoric at a conference in Transylvania, while Orban's local partners - the ethnic Hungarians' party UDMR - came under criticism for the same radical statements.

It is "regrettable that such ideas are propagated from the territory of Romania," Romanian foreign minister Aurescu commented, according to News.ro.

On a more radical note, Peter Eckstein-Kovacs, a former member of the UDMR and a critical voice towards the current leadership of the Hungarian party in Romania, told RFI that "the statements made by the prime minister of Hungary at Tusnad are racist." The UDMR must be questioned until it draws a line between itself and "these excesses that can be seen from the Moon," he also said, News.ro reported.

UDMR is a member of the Romanian ruling coalition, and it has not yet commented on Orban's controversial rhetoric.

Speaking at an annual gathering of Hungarians in Tusnad in Transylvania, Hungary's prime minister Viktor Orban argued against the "mixing" of European and non-European races in a speech that drew outrage from opposition parties and European politicians.

"We [Hungarians] are not a mixed race … and we do not want to become a mixed race," Orban said on July 23, The Guardian reported. He added that countries where European and non-Europeans mingle were "no longer nations".

Separately, Orban said that a new strategy of the West is needed to end the war in Ukraine. 

andrei@romania-insider.com

(Photo source: Gints Ivuskans/Dreamstime.com)