Budapest: A threat from Italy to cut European Union funding to eastern European members is ‘political blackmail,’ Hungarian government spokesman Zoltan Kovacs was quoted as saying on Friday by the national news agency MTI.

Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi warned Eastern European leaders on Thursday that they may get less European Union development money if they do not help with the refugee crisis, participants at an EU summit in Brussels said.

Kovacs reiterated Hungary's long-standing position that relocation quotas forcing EU members to take a certain number of refugees had no place in Europe, adding that Europe's current migration policy has failed because it is impossible to enforce.