The anti-terrorism proposals of US Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump make him the better option for Europe and Hungary, Prime Minister Viktor Orbán has said.
PM Orbán said that the ideas of the American presidential candidate about the need for the best intelligence services and his opposition to "democracy export" were also applicable in Europe.
"I am not Donald Trump's campaigner. I never thought that the idea would ever occur to me that he is the better of the open options for Europe and Hungary," the prime minister said.
"I listened to (Trump) and I have to tell you that he made three proposals to stop terrorism. And as a European I myself could not have drawn up better what Europe needs," the prime minister added.
PM Orbán, whose speech was broadcast live on Hungarian state media, blamed the West for intervening unsuccessfully in countries like Egypt and Libya. While Hungary was not "indifferent" to the state of political and human rights in Turkey, he said its stability was most important.
"If I'm asked what is Hungary's strongest expectation regarding Turkey today, we will put stability first," the prime minister said. "If Turkey becomes unstable, many tens of millions of people from that region will hurtle toward Europe without any sort of filtering, screening or control."
PM Orbán was again very critical of the European Union's leadership in Brussels.
"Europe's current political leadership has failed," he said, adding that the EU was "fooling itself" if it still viewed itself as a "global actor," because that era had ended with the vote by Britain to leave the bloc.
The EU's lack of influence even as a regional actor was clear in the crises in Ukraine and Syria, where the United States and Russia played leading roles, he said.
PM Orbán again said that individual countries in Europe should have more authority to make their own decisions on specific issues, like migration.
"We have to make it clear that our problem is not in Mecca but in Brussels," he said. "The bureaucrats in Brussels are an obstacle for us, not Islam. We could manage Islam if only (Brussels) would let us manage it in the way we think is worth it."
Hungary placed reinforcements on its borders with Serbia and Croatia last year, which is also an external border of Europe's Schengen zone, greatly stemming the flow of migrants coming north from Turkey through Greece and trying to reach western Europe.