HUNGARY’S anti-immigration government said today that it is prepared to provide free one-way tickets to Brussels for migrants and asylum-seekers attempting to enter the European Union.

Speaking at a news conference in the capital, Gergely Gulyas, chief of staff to Prime Minister Viktor Orban, criticised a June ruling by the European Court of Justice that ordered Hungary to pay a €200 million (£169m) fine for persistently breaking the bloc’s asylum rules and an additional €1m (£848,000) a day until it brings its policies into line with EU law.

Mr Gulyas said: “Brussels wants to force us at any cost to let migrants in.”

He added that if the EU continues to impose a system of regulations on Hungary that “does not make it possible to detain migrants at the border,” his country will offer every one of them “transport to Brussels free of charge.”

Hungary built fences protected by razor wire on its southern border with Serbia and Croatia and a pair of transit zones for holding asylum-seekers on its border with Serbia after the large rise in refugee numbers of 2015, linked to the Islamic State terror group’s Middle East expansion then. Those transit zones have since closed.

But the EU has taken issue with Hungary’s rigid asylum system and asked the bloc’s top court to fine Budapest for forcing people seeking international protection to travel to its embassies in Serbia or Ukraine to apply for a travel permit.

Today, Mr Gulyas blasted the penalties that the government has incurred, saying: “Hungary doesn’t want to pay this daily fine indefinitely, so we will make it possible for people to enter if they want and will offer them a one-way ticket to Brussels.”