Italy should "close its ports" to stop migrants and refugees from reaching the mainland, Hungary's rightwing premier Viktor Orban said on Friday, echoing a similar call from Austria a day earlier.
The leaders of Hungary, the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Poland - the so-called Visegrad group - have written to Italian Premier Paolo Gentiloni, urging this course of action, Orban said.
The "problem" must be solved in Libya, where the migrants set sail, added Orban, saying he did not rule out military action.
On Thursday, Austria's foreign minister Sebastian Kurz urged Italy to halt the ferrying of migrants to its mainland from Lampedusa and other islands where they first land.
"Rescue missions cannot be seen as a ticket to central Europe," Kurz told his Italian counterpart Angelino Alfano on the sidelines of a meeting in Vienna of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe.
Italy is due next year to take over from Austria as chairman of OSCE and Italy's programme will include a "strong focus" on the Mediterranean region and the migration crisis, Alfano said in Vienna.
A total of 93,369 boat migrants reached Italy this year though 19 July - 85 percent of those who entered Europe and over 10,000 more people than in the same period of 2016 - the International Organisation for Migration said on Friday.
Italy's centre-left government is demanding more help from European Union states in handling over half a million people who have arrived in the country in the past three years as the migrant influx continues.
Italy has threatened to close its ports to charity vessels carrying out rescues off Libya's coast and has issued a controversial new code of conduct to curb the actions of NGOs saving migrants in the Mediterranean that has drawn criticism from rights groups and from the UN.
Rome has also said it could issue some 200,000 migrants with European Union Schengen visas, shifting the burden of the grinding crisis to other European nations.
