Mr Orban’s charm offensive to state leaders is part of his plan to wield influence in Berlin, where the government has been highly critical of his hard-line stance against refugees and Budapest taking its fair share of migrants.
Earlier this year Angela Merkel launched a withering attack on eastern European countries, including Hungary, for building new fences in Europe despite their own isolation at the end of the Cold War.
But keen to send a message to the German chancellor, tough-talking PM Mr Orban has sent his Hungarian officials to meet leaders from the German states of Saxony, Bavaria, Hesse, Baden-Wurttemberg and Saxony-Anhalt.
Milan Nič, an analyst with the German Council on Foreign Relations, told politics news site Politico.co.uk: “Mr Orbán strategically started to develop relationships with Länder – regional states – where he found maybe more understanding, a more business-oriented focus, and less criticism on human rights and political issues.”
It comes after the German Chancellor, who has faced criticism over her own open door policy on asylum seekers, warned Hungary’s refusal to comply with a European Court of Justice ruling on taking in more refugees risked Budapest’s continued membership of the bloc.
Hungary and Slovakia had tried to overturn the union’s 2015 plan to relocate more than 160,000 asylum seekers from Italy and Greece across all 28 member states.
But Mr Orban is keen to maintain strong business relations with its biggest trading partner, Germany, which accounted for 26.5 per cent of Hungary’s total imports and 27.5 per cent of its total exports in 2016.
He previously told German regional daily Passauer Neue Presse: “Even though we’re smaller, Germany must treat Hungary with respect.
“We don’t want to rehabilitate the Hungarian economy using German money. All we want is to trade and do business, and we want our citizens to be allowed to work.”
It comes at a time that Mrs Merkel and Mr Orban’s relations are at an all time low and the pair have not had a bilateral meeting since 2015.
This year’s German-Hungarian Forum, an annual event held since the 1990s, was also cancelled, further showing the bitter divisions ripping the European Union apart.