Challenging French President Emmanuel Macron, Hungary's prime minister said his country's objective for the upcoming European Parliament elections is for "anti-immigration forces" to become a majority in all European Union institutions, including Parliament and the EU's executive Commission.

PM Victor Orban, one of the European Union's toughest opponents of mass immigration, also said that he had "great hopes" for cooperation between Italy and Poland, both of which oppose immigration.

Italy's deputy prime minister, Matteo Salvini, said during a visit to Warsaw on Wednesday that Italy and Poland should join forces in a euro-sceptic alliance to contest the European vote. "The Polish-Italian or Warsaw-Rome alliance is one of the greatest developments that this year could have started with," Orban told a news conference, describing Salvini as a "hero" for stopping migration at the shores of Italy.

Orban said he was "fed up" with the fact that whenever the European People's Party, to which his ruling Fidesz party also belongs, looks for allies, it looks to the left, parties he called pro-immigration. "There should be a Rome-Warsaw axis, which is able to govern, is responsible and is against immigration and is willing to work together with the anti-immigration forces within the EPP," Orban said.

He also said he considers French President Emmanuel Macron the leader of Europe's "pro-immigration forces," and therefore he had a duty to oppose him. "There is no denying that Emmanuel Macron is an important figure, moreover, the leader of the pro-immigration forces," Orban told a press conference.

"It is nothing personal, but a matter of our countries' future. If what he wants with regards to migration materializes in Europe, that would be bad for Hungary, therefore I must fight him."

Compiled from wires