Ukraine in response to Hungarian support violates the rights of the Hungarian minority in Transcarpathia, Budapest does not consider it “the road to Europe,” said Hungarian Prime Minister Gergely Gyasz.
“The Ukrainian state, which we support financially, morally and in humanitarian actions, believes that this support should be repaid by adopting rules that are incompatible with all European human rights standards, harshly hit national communities and trample on the fundamental rights of minorities. Hungary does not believe that if a state does not put the rights of ethnic communities at all, it is the road to Europe,” Gujász said at a graduation ceremony for students from Transylvania and Transcarpathia.
Güjas also called it a positive result of the past decade that in Hungary “no one disputes the rightness of thinking about a unified Hungarian nation anymore.”
Earlier, Peter Szijjártó, Minister of Foreign Affairs and Foreign Economic Relations of Hungary, said that at the initiative of Hungary and Romania, the Council of Europe decided to appeal to the Venice Commission on the situation of national minorities in Ukraine, Budapest hopes that Kiev will enforce its decision. According to him, Budapest will not support any significant move by Ukraine toward NATO and the EU until the rights of Transcarpathian Hungarians are restored.
According to Szijjártó, under the new education law in Ukraine from September 2023 it is going to eliminate all 99 Hungarian minority schools, the number of subjects taught in national languages will be limited to 20 percent after the fourth grade, it will be impossible to take final and entrance exams in Hungarian. At the end of May the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine postponed until September 1, 2024 the transition of schools, where teaching is carried out in one of the languages of the European Union, to teaching in the Ukrainian language.
Siyjjarto also previously stated that many Ukrainian state institutions are willing to pay Transcarpathian Hungarians $850 a year to send their children to Ukrainian-language classes, a move Budapest considers unacceptable.
Earlier, the Ukrainian language ombudsman Taras Kremin said that problems in the organization of education in the Ukrainian language have been revealed in schools in the Transcarpathian region of Ukraine, where many Hungarians live. According to local media reports, Hungarian flags have been removed from public institutions in the city of Mukachevo and local villages, and several heads of Hungarian institutions close to the Zakarpattia Hungarian Cultural Society have been fired. Hungarian Foreign Ministry State Secretary for Bilateral Relations Tamas Menzer called the harassment of the Hungarian national minority in Ukrainian Transcarpathia unacceptable.
Hungarian President Katalin Novak said in a letter to Vladimir Zelensky that she had commented on the law on national minorities concerning the situation of Hungarians in Zakarpattya, but he did not respond.
In October 2022, authorities in the city of Mukachevo, Transcarpathian region of Ukraine, dismantled the Hungarian eagle-turtle in the Palanok castle and replaced it with a Ukrainian trident.
Tensions between Ukraine and Hungary arose amid discussions about the Ukrainian law on education, which significantly reduces the opportunity to study in the languages of ethnic minorities. The law came into force on September 28, 2017, and was to be enacted in phases until the end of 2020. Szijjártó stated that Hungary would continue to block a ministerial meeting of the Ukraine-NATO commission because there was no progress in resolving the issues that concerned Budapest.
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