Hungary's Orban defends 'cultural standpoint' in race remark row

Hungary's nationalist Prime Minister Viktor Orban on Thursday defended his comments against creating "peoples of mixed-race", saying they represented a "cultural" standpoint.

"It happens sometimes that I speak in a way that can be misunderstood... the position that I represent is a cultural... standpoint," Orban told reporters during a visit to neighbouring Austria.

Orban sparked a storm of criticism after he warned against mixing with "non-Europeans" in a speech in Romania's Transylvania region, home to a Hungarian community, on Saturday.

Austrian Chancellor Karl Nehammer said in a joint press conference with Orban that the issue had been "resolved... amicably and in all clarity", adding his country "strongly condemned... any form of racism or anti-Semitism".

Austria is the first EU country to host Orban for talks since he won a fourth straight mandate in an April landslide.

Besides the race row, the two leaders discussed migration and energy security amid tensions over Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

Jewish community representatives voiced alarm after Orban, an ultra-conservative known for his anti-migrant policy and virulent rhetoric, said that "we do not want to become peoples of mixed-race".

Both Orban and Nehammer said they would not support any embargo on Russian gas, on which their countries are heavily dependent, with Orban describing any such embargo as a "wall".