BUDAPEST – Under fire from opposition parties, Viktor Orban said on Monday he would amend the constitution to ensure the European Union cannot settle migrants in Hungary after Sunday’s referendum even though turnout was too low to make the vote valid.

The outcome deprived the maverick right-wing prime minister of a clear-cut victory with which to challenge EU migrant quotas and the radical nationalist Jobbik party called on him to quit.

Jobbik said Sunday’s referendum, in which the government said quotas were rejected by 98.3 percent of voters but only 40 percent of eligible Hungarians cast a valid vote, was a fiasco that offered a “trump card” to Brussels. At least 50 percent turnout in the plebiscite was required to legitimise the result.

Along with other ex-Communist countries in eastern Europe, Hungary opposes a policy that would require all EU states to take in some of the hundreds of thousands of mainly Muslim migrants seeking asylum in the bloc after arriving last year.

Hungarian and Polish policeman patrol at the Hungary and Serbia border fence near the village of Asotthalom, Hungary. (Photo: Reuters)

Orban told parliament the referendum had achieved its goal as more Hungarians, some 3.28 million, repudiated the migrant quotas than had voted for EU membership in a 2003 referendum.

He said 1 million more voters supported his government’s migration policy now than voted for his Fidesz party in the 2014 parliamentary election, when he was returned to power.

“This decision, this support (from the people) obliges me to act on it,” Orban told parliament as opposition lawmakers hissed and booed.

“Fidesz and the Christian Democratic Party believe the appropriate, honest and necessary step is to give legal weight to the will of the people … Therefore, I am initiating an amendment to the constitution,” he said, without elaborating.

– Reuters