Serbia’s new law on ethnic councils, the agencies of ethnic minority government, is an example to be followed, Hungarian President Laszlo Solyom said during a visit to the northern Serbian Vojvodina province on Thursday.
“The law is a huge opportunity for Serbia’s minorities for complete cultural self-governance; this is an extremely significant achievement towards autonomy,” Solyom told reporters in Subotica.
In an address delivered at a local ecclesiastical secondary school, Solyom called Serbia’s enabling its ethnic minorities exemplary and said that “this opportunity would be inconceivable in some other countries with ethnic kin.”
Solyom also called on members of the Hungarian community to “make a statement” of their ethnicity and sign their names in the electors’ list. He also said he trusted that the necessary – about 118,000 – signatures required by the new law to enable the community to directly elect the Hungarian National Council would soon be collected.
