Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban on Thursday defended his weekend comments against creating "peoples of mixed-race," saying they represented a "cultural, civilizational standpoint."
"It sometimes happens that I speak in a way that can be misunderstood ... the position that I represent is a cultural, civilizational standpoint," Orban told a joint press conference with Austrian Chancellor Karl Nehammer during a one-day visit to neighboring Austria.
Orban sparked a storm of criticism after he warned against mixing with "non-Europeans" in a speech in Romania's Transylvania region, home to a Hungarian community, last Saturday.
Nehammer said the issue had been "resolved ... amicably and in all clarity," adding his country "strongly condemned... any form of racism or anti-Semitism."
The International Auschwitz Committee has urged the European Union and Nehammer to distance themselves from "Orban's racist undertones."
Austria is the first EU country to host Orban for talks since he won a fourth straight mandate in an April landslide.
Besides the race row, the two leaders discussed migration and energy security amid tensions over Russia's invasion of Ukraine.
Vienna sees itself "as an honest broker" and is anxious not to sideline Hungary, an Austrian official told Agence France-Presse (AFP) on condition of anonymity.
Jewish community representatives voiced alarm after Orban, an ultra-conservative known for his anti-migrant policy and virulent rhetoric, said, "we do not want to become peoples of mixed-race."
The 59-year-old also seemed to allude to the Nazi German gas chambers when criticizing a Brussels plan to reduce European gas demand by 15% following Russia's invasion of Ukraine.
Hungary was the only EU member to oppose the plan, which passed with a majority vote this week.
An adviser to Orban, Zsuzsa Hegedus, had resigned on Tuesday, slamming his speech as "a pure Nazi text."
In her resignation letter, published Tuesday by Hungarian media, the longstanding adviser compared Orban’s rhetoric to the language used in Nazi Germany.
"I am sincerely sorry that I have to end a relationship due to such a shameful position,” said Hegedus, who worked with Orban for 20 years. "I was left with no other choice.”
In response, Orban stressed his government's "policy of zero tolerance when it comes to anti-Semitism and racism," according to the letter made public.
"I am proud of the results which Hungary achieved against racism in recent years," Orban told reporters on Wednesday.
Hegedus' resignation was a rare criticism from within Orban's closest circle. The Hungarian prime minister and his conservative Fidesz party hold a comfortable majority and have sought to curb critical voices.
In Saturday's speech, Orban declared that countries with largescale migration from outside of Europe "are no longer nations.”
"There is a world in which European peoples are mixed together with those arriving from outside Europe,” he said in the speech in Baile Tusnad, a majority ethnic Hungarian city in Romania. "Now, that is a mixed-race world.”
In what he described as "our world,” Orban said, "people from within Europe mix with one another."
"We are willing to mix with one another, but we do not want to become peoples of mixed-race,” he said, adding: "Migration has split Europe in two – or I could say that it has split the West in two."
"One half is a world where European and non-European peoples live together. These countries are no longer nations: they are nothing more than a conglomeration of peoples.”
