Hungary’s foreign minister has savaged Jean-Claude Juncker for his comments suggesting that Hungary’s ruling party pursued policies at odds with European Union values.

European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker’s “lecturing” others about Christian Democracy “is a bad joke”, the Hungarian foreign minister said in a statement. Péter Szijjártó insisted that Juncker “has not been a Christian Democrat for a long time and he is in fact a liberal, pro-migration politician”.  “Juncker has laid wreaths at Marx’s monument and commemorated Fidel Castro,” he said. In the meantime, “migrants flooded Europe and the Brits left the EU under his presidency,” the minister added.

Earlier in the day, Germany’s Welt am Sonntag quoted Juncker as saying that the policies of Hungary’s ruling Fidesz were incompatible with Christian Democratic values.  Answering a question why he allowed Prime Minister Viktor Orbán “get away with his anti-EU rants”, Juncker said he was locked in a dispute with Orbán and he had pressed for Fidesz’s exclusion from the European People’s Party.