Prime Minister Gordon Bajnai, speaking at a meeting with representatives of ethnic Hungarian organisations on Thursday, pledged to continue to support ethnic Hungarians beyond the borders despite the economic downturn.
The government has duties and moral obligations to Hungarians living beyond the borders which it has to fulfill even under difficult circumstances, Bajnai said.
The prime minister said that while his government had to clean the slate in several areas, he intended to maintain continuity in the area of relations with ethnic kin in neighbouring countries.
Bajnai said Hungary’s domestic politics had hurt these relations on several counts and it was now time to try to heal those wounds and restore trust. The plans would not only cover the next year but the next ten years too, he added.
The economic crisis had triggered many bad automatic reactions worldwide, among them protectionism, which often slipped into chauvinism, Bajnai said.
He underlined the importance of making the borders permeable, strengthening bilateral relations with neighbouring countries, adding that the effects of the crisis in domestic politics must be prevented from spilling over the borders to ethnic Hungarian communities.
With regard to Serbia, bilateral relations must be “accelerated”, he said. European Union funding targeting relations with ethnic minorities must be used as effectively as possible, he added.
At a press conference following the meeting, Pal Csaky, leader of Slovakia’s Hungarian Coalition Party (MKP) said he was glad that plans to close the Hungarian embassy in Kosice had been abandoned.
On the subject of Slovakia’s planned new language laws, Csaky said that the drafted amendments violated Slovakia’s pledge to keep the status quo in matters regarding minorities.
He added that the Slovak parliament would vote on the bill at the end of June. Csaky also dismissed criticism by Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico on politicians from his party and Hungary’s main opposition Fidesz referring to politics representing the “Carpathian Basin”.
From Voivodina, N Serbia, Istvan Pasztor, leader of the ethnic Hungarian party VMSZ, said that “joint pledges made by the Serbian government and his party regarding improvements in the situation of Hungarians living in Voivodina had come to nothing”.
Bela Marko, Leader of Romania’s Hungarian Democratic Alliance RMDSZ, said Hungarians in Romania felt tense about the recent dismissal of many Hungarian professionals from public office, which he described as a “kind of ethnic clean-up”. He urged the Hungarian government to take clear steps against such manifestations of anti-Hungarian sentiment, so that Hungarian-Romanian relations can stay amicable.
