Viktor Orban, the Hungarian Prime Minister, strongly condemned antisemitism and pledged to honour the memory of Holocaust victims at the World Jewish Congress, which met in Budapest last weekend, but failed to criticise the far-right Jobbik party, the third largest in parliament.

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban has banned protests against the World Jewish Congress plenary assembly, due to take place in Budapest next week.

The World Jewish Congress (WJC) has defended its invitation to Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán to speak at its quadriennial assembly, despite his failure to denounce the hate speech of his close friend and one of his party’s founders, Zsolt Bayer.

The chair of the Parliamentary Committee Against Antisemitism is planning to take a cross-party delegation of MPs to Hungary later this year to challenge the rise of an extremist party in the country.

MPs spoke movingly of meeting Holocaust survivors and visiting the sites of Nazi atrocities in a parliamentary debate convened to mark Holocaust Memorial Day.

In what has become a tradition since 2008, politicians of all parties acknowledged the annual memorial day, which officially takes place this year on Sunday.

A prominent Hungarian commentator who has been widely accused of writing antisemitic articles has said that Gypsies are “animals” that “shouldn’t be allowed to exist”.