The Slovak government has violated the linguistic status quo, Foreign Minister Kinga Göncz told Parliament’s European affairs committee on Tuesday. The Slovak Education Ministry, headed by a representative of the far-right Slovak National Party, is preparing to publish a “hybrid” geography textbook in which the text is in Hungarian but the place names are in Slovak.
Hungarian communities in Slovakia are intimidated and equal rights are questioned, Göncz declared. Ethnic Hungarian schools are discriminated against in projects that receive EU funds, she added.
Hungary is prepared to engage in consultations to examine item by item which clauses of the bilateral basic treaty have been implemented and which have not. The Hungarian and Slovak foreign ministers will take up the matter in Brussels today.
Hungarian Coalition Party deputy chairman László Szigeti, a former education minister, said his party wants to see place names in the language of the given school.
Committee chairman Mátyás Eörsi, a Free Democrat, called for empathy towards Slovakia “which is just a few years old,” but observed that empathy has its limits and “one has to speak up in the event of open provocations.”
