The stark warning comes from German MEP Manfred Weber, an ally of Chancellor Angela Merkel and leader of the centre-right EEP grouping in the European Parliament, who will discuss the matter with Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orban at a meeting in Budapest later today.
Last Thursday, Mr Orban told tens of thousands of supporters at a rally in the Hungarian capital they must fight the “external forces and international powers” who want to allow mass immigration into their country.
Hundreds of thousands of migrants from the Middle East, Asia and Africa travelled across southeast Europe in 2015 passing through Hungary. They responded with a border fence and even armed guards with rubber bullets to shoot trespassers.
A majority were heading for Germany, and Angela Merkel set about ordering EU member states to take a share of the migrants in a quota system, which Hungary and its allies in the Visegrad area were against.
Speaking to US political news agency Politico, Mr Weber said: “The time for a common European solution on migration policy is slowly running out with a view to the 2019 European election.
“The compromise search must start now.”
Mr Weber’s own CSU party leader, German Minister Horst Seehofer, has in the past week made moves to make a compromise much easier, even after he blasted the Brussels bloc for its patronising stance with eastern European member states over the distribution of refugees.
The leader of the Bavarian sister party last week criticised the EU for its “moralising” tone towards eastern countries, like Hungary and Poland, who have refused to take in migrants under the bloc’s quota system.
The conservative politician, a critic of Mrs Merkel’s 2015 migrant policy, urged the EU to stop making decisions “over the heads of member states”.
Speaking to German Sunday newspaper Die Welt am Sonntag, Mr Seehofer said: “A moralising tone has crept in with the Eastern Europeans, which is counterproductive because every member state has its own pride.
“The EU commission is often patronising.
“We need to put more energy into dialogue on the distribution of refugees. If we keep negotiating patiently, a majority of countries will support it.”
Mr Seehofer announced a “master plan” to kick rejected migrants out of Germany at a faster rate under the new coalition government and has vower to “get tougher” on those who break the law in the country or are deemed a security threat.
Mrs Merkel has held a defiant stance on immigration, which has seen her welcome more than one million refugees into Germany as part of her widely-criticised open door refugee policy.