Bucharest (AFP) - The Romanian foreign ministry said Wednesday it had summoned the Hungarian ambassador to express concern over Budapest's decision to build a fence between the two countries to stop the flow of migrants.
State secretary George Ciamba said in a ministry statement the Hungarian government had not informed Bucharest of the plan, which he branded "out of step with the spirit of Europe".
Ciamba also criticised Hungary's plan as futile as Romania is not currently facing a major influx of refugees and migrants.
Until this week, migrants on the Balkan route had mostly travelled up from the Greek islands through Macedonia, Serbia, Hungary and Austria to Germany.
Hungary on Tuesday sealed gaps in its fence with Serbia and introduced tough new laws that threaten three-year jail sentences against refugees and migrants who enter the country illegally.
On Wednesday migrants were seen instead carving out a new route through Croatia, to the west of Hungary.
Ciamba meanwhile blasted criticism by Hungary's Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto of Romanian Prime Minister Victor Ponta as "unacceptable".
Ponta on Tuesday had expressed on Facebook his "indignation... at the mentality and attitudes that Europe has only ever seen in the 1930s and 1940s.
"Barbed wire, aggressive laws, prisons and brutality that certainly won't solve the problem but will only show that in Hungary there are political decision-makers who are no better than in Syria, Libya or any of the other countries the refugees are fleeing," he wrote.
Szijjarto blasted Ponta for his comments, branding them "irrational and offensive to the whole of Hungary."
Romanian-Hungarian relations, difficult in the past, have been extremely tense since Hungary's Tuesday announcement to build a fence with Romania in a bid to stem the migration wave.
Hungary's hardline anti-migrant stance has been sharply criticised, with the UN refugee agency saying it could violate the 1951 Refugee Convention.
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