The spat between Luxembourg and Hungary is escalating.

Hungary’s foreign affairs and trade minister, Péter Szijjártó, has said that Luxembourg’s long-standing foreign affairs minister Jean Asselborn “hates Hungary” and is “a politician who is a fanatic supporter of immigration, and who is playing according to George Soros’s beat.”

In a statement to Hungarian news agency MTI, which was also published on the Hungarian foreign affairs ministry website on 19 February, Szijjártó said that “Jean Asselborn has crossed all possible boundaries with his latest statement”.

He was reacting to a recent interview in which Asselborn had called on the EU to trigger the sanctions procedure against Hungary for persistently breaching the EU’s fundamental values. Asselborn was particularly appalled by the draft bill to ban NGOs which help refugees in Hungary.

“They want to flood Europe, and accordingly Hungary too, with migrants; they are “extremist liberals who represent an unacceptable standpoint”, Szijjártó stated.

 “Jean Asselborn is an idiot, but the Hungarians are not; the people of Hungary have no need of the Luxembourgian foreign minister’s crazy ideas to know what’s good for them”, according to Szijjártó.

According to the Hungarian foreign minister, Asselborn’s statement has shown what is at stake at the upcoming elections in April. Szijjártó said:

“The Orbán government is protecting Hungary’s security, but the Luxembourgian Foreign Minister would like to demolish the border security fence together with George Soros and his comrades in principle in Hungary, and flood Hungary with migrants”.