Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban has apologized to European conservative parties for calling them “useful idiots” over an anti-EU billboard campaign that could see his party ejected from the European Parliament’s center-right EPP bloc.

Orban has sent “a letter of apology to the European People’s Party (EPP),” a government spokesperson told AFP on Thursday. In a newspaper interview earlier this month, Orban called critics within the EPP “useful idiots” and accused them of helping the group’s leftwing and liberal opponents ahead of European Parliament elections in May.

The letters were sent Wednesday to leaders of 13 member parties of the EPP who have proposed expelling Orban’s ruling Fidesz party from the bloc, his press chief Bertalan Havasi was quoted as saying.__RT.com