No matter what extremists say in Slovakia, the Slovak-Hungarian declaration approved by the two prime ministers in Szecseny in September is valid and being observed by the Slovak government, Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Balazs told MTI on Wednesday.
The Hungarian-Slovak joint committee on minorities will discuss the implementation of Slovakia’s controversial state language law on Friday, Balazs said after talks with his Slovak counterpart Miroslav Lajcak in Athens.
He told the Slovak minister that Budapest would closely monitor the enforcement of the state language law.
The two ministers are attending the foreign ministerial session of the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) in the Greek capital.
“We continue to insist on bringing the Slovak law on minority languages into conformity with the amended state language law,” Balazs said.
The Hungarian government, he said, was waiting for the opinion of the Council of Europe’s Venice Commission about the state language law, and expects Slovakia to bring its law in line with the commission’s recommendations.
On the sidelines of the meeting, Balazs met OSCE High Commissioner on National Minorities Knut Vollebaek, who promised that the OSCE would delegate experts to the Hungarian-Slovak joint committee session, and that he would meet representatives of Slovakia’s ethnic Hungarian community before the law takes effect on January 1.
Balazs also met Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov for talks on “restarting and boosting” bilateral relations, and making preparations for the Hungarian prime minister’s forthcoming visit to Moscow.
