Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán on Friday compared the EU's unification project with Adolf Hitler's quest for world domination.
Ever since the end of the Roman Empire, there had been efforts to restore an empire on its territory, the right-wing populist leader said in the western Hungarian city of Veszprém.
"Byzantium, Charlemagne, [German Emperor] Otto, Napoleon and Hitler - they all dreamed, each on a different basis, of European unity," Orbán said.
The situation today was no different, he continued: "Independent national existence and the idea of empire are present at the same time. National culture and European values. Sovereignty and - as they put it in Brussels - an ever closer union."
The latter term features in the preamble of the EU's Lisbon Treaty, which applies to all member states.
Hungary joined the EU in 2004. Orbán, who has ruled his country in a near-authoritarian manner since 2010, has repeatedly fought against obligations arising from EU membership, for example in asylum policy or with regard to the rule of law.
At the same time, the central European country is a recipient of considerable EU aid. Some of these funds are currently frozen because the EU sees their lawful and corruption-free use endangered in view of a judiciary that is in part no longer independent. In turn, Orban repeatedly rails against "Brussels bureaucrats," also likening the EU to the former Soviet Union.
"This person is sick," Hungarian opposition leader Ferenc Gyurcsány said of the head of government's latest gaffe. Mentioning Hitler together with the European idea is "a sick, disgusting thought," Gyurcsány wrote on his Facebook page.
