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Hungary's populist Prime Minister Viktor Orban suffered a blow on Sunday in his revolt against the European Union (EU) after low voter turnout voided his referendum aimed at rejecting a contested migrant quota plan.
Although a whopping 98 per cent of those who voted supported his bid to reject the plan, turnout reached just 43 per cent of the eight-million-strong electorate, falling short of a 50 per cent threshold, the National Election Committee said after nearly all the ballots had been counted.
Opposition figures swiftly called on Orban to step down over the vote, after rights groups had accused him of whipping up anti-migrant fears despite there being only a few hundred asylum seekers in Hungary.
But the firebrand leader had earlier vowed there would be "legal consequences" regardless of the outcome, as he downplayed the significance of the low turnout.
Orban's right-wing government led an expensive media offensive urging voters to spurn the EU's plan, which seeks to share migrants around the 28 member states via mandatory quotas without the consent of national parliaments.
"A valid referendum is always better than an invalid one, but the legal consequences will be the same," Orban said earlier today.
"There is only one condition for this: that there are more 'No' votes than 'Yes' votes," added Orban.
The firebrand leader has emerged as the standard-bearer of those opposed to German Chancellor Angela Merkel's "open-door" policy, in the wake of the bloc's worst migration crisis since World War II.
Polling stations opened at 0400 GMT and closed at 1700 GMT, with final results expected later this evening.
Opposition parties and rights groups had called on Hungarians to boycott the referendum or spoil their ballot.
The EU proposal – spearheaded by Germany and approved by most EU governments last year after antagonistic debates – seeks to ease pressure on frontline countries Italy and Greece, the first port of arrival for most migrants.
But implementation has been slow.
Eastern and central European nations vehemently oppose the plan aimed at relocating 160,000 people, many of who fled war in Syria.
Even as Hungarians voted, neighbouring Austria's Foreign Minister Sebastian Kurz said the EU should stop clinging to its troubled plan.
"The target is totally unrealistic," he told the German daily Welt am Sonntag, warning that disagreements over the plan could threaten "the cohesion of the entire European Union".
Hungary has not accepted a single one of the 1,294 refugees allocated to it under the scheme and instead joined Slovakia in filing a legal challenge against it.
