Czech President Milos Zeman, commenting on a Hungarian law that bans LGBT material from schools, told a television interview on Sunday that he finds transgender people “disgusting”.

Zeman slammed claims in defense of the “naturalness” of homosexuality, gender change and commented on the new Hungarian law aimed at protecting minors from promoting and displaying homosexual material. 

If someone undergoes a sex-change operation, he commits a crime of self-harm. Every operation is a risk. And these transgender people are really disgusting to me, he told CNN Prima.

The Hungarian law, which has been strongly criticised by the neo-liberal bureaucratic elites in the European Union and their Hungarian-backed opposition, bans LGBTI content in schools and the regular education process, and it has also been criticized for allegedly “stigmatizing and discriminating” against members of this community.

At an EU summit last week, Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte told Hungarian premier Viktor Orban to respect LGBT rights or leave the bloc.

More than half of the EU’s 27 member states have opposed the law but so far the Czechs have not done so. Zeman said the condemnation amounted to meddling in a country’s internal affairs.

Czech presidents have limited executive powers but Zeman and his predecessors have had a strong influence on public debate. The president has also leaned toward Russia and China and criticized immigration from Muslim countries.

Viktor Orbán says that he is not against homosexuals, but that he is against the manipulation not only of parents, but also of children in sex education. I see no reason to disagree with him, because I am completely annoyed by the suffragettes, the Me Too movement and Prague Pride, Zeman said.

Unless it rows back on the law, Hungary faces a legal challenge at the EU’s highest court. Luxembourg Prime Minister Xavier Bettel said Orban should also be subject to an as-yet untested procedure to cut EU funding for those who violate rules.

Orban, who has been Hungary’s prime minister since 2010, has become more conservative and combative in promoting what he says are traditional Christian values from what he sees as excessive Western liberalism. Before last week’s summit he told reporters the law was aimed at guaranteeing parents’ right to decide on their children’s sexual education.