Stinging comments by Hungarian officials this week lambasting official Greece for failing to properly guard its borders, and by extension the EU’s external borders, apparently hit a “raw nerve” at the Greek foreign ministry.

A foreign ministry spokesman issued a peeved response on Thursday as continuing waves of legitimate war refugees and would-be new residents in the EU continued to arrive in waves on Greece’s eastern Aegean islands — all having disembarked from perennial EU candidate Turkey.

Hungarian government spokesman Zoltan Kovacs emphasized on Thursday that “the Schengen Pact’s external borders must be protected, in large part, by Greece. He also said Budapest has already spent 200 million euros to increase border protections but has only received seven million from the EU.

Here’s the ministry’s statement in reply to reporters’ questions:

“We find it difficult to witness either the wave of statements from Hungarian officials against our country or, and mainly, what the UN Secretary General characterizes as the “unacceptable” conduct of Hungary’s forces of order against the refugees, including infants, who are living through the drama and misery of war.

The use of violence and armed patrols, and the driving of innocent victims of war into Balkan minefields do not constitute conduct appropriate to a member state of the European Union.

It is obvious that the burden of the current, unprecedented refugee crisis cannot be shouldered by one country alone – in this case, Greece, which is doing everything humanly possible. These urgent circumstance require humanity, cooperation, solidarity and coordination with the other European partners, and not brutal cynicism, provocative statements, the use of violence, or a return to Cold-War walls.”

Not to counter the spokesman’s statement, but one minor clarification: Cold War-era walls were erected by Soviet-dominated communist states to keep their own people confined, today’s walls aim at keeping people out.