Good morning, ladies and gentlemen!First of all, let me thank you for the flattering opportunity to be here and in my fifteen-minute presentation talk about the Hungarian national minority and its situation inSlovakia.Because of the short time available I cannot go into details, but I still hope that I canshare some useful information with you. Please let me introduce myself. My name isAkos Horony. I'm a lawyer and work as an associate for the Legal Aid Service of theRoundtable of Hungarians in Slovakia.What is it that you should definitely know about the Hungarian national minority(community)? According to the census from last year, the number of the Hungarianminority in Slovakia is approximately half a million. It is a typical national minority thatdid not come into existence by immigration, but through the change of borders (as itis usual in most member states of KEK). The arrangement without referendum(peace conference), closing WWI (the first world war), sketched the southern bordersof the newly created Czechoslovakia in such a way that the new state border did notfollow the otherwise unusually edgy Slovak-Hungarian border within Central Europe.As a result, more than 700 000 inhabitants of Hungarian nationality were attached tothe new state. During the last 90 years, the proportion of Hungarians within Slovakiahas decreased from the initial 22 percent to 8,5 percent (mainly because of violentexpulsion, exchange of population, natural assimilation). It is certainly an importantfact that Hungarians are concentrated in the southern parts of Slovakia. They live onmore than half-thousand settlements in significant numbers, and on 400 settlementsthey still represent the majority. 80 percent of Hungarians in Slovakia live onsettlements where they are the majority. I consider this information importantbecause the demands of a concentrated national-linguistic minority are guided by thisfact in a natural way.In the last few years, you could hear and read a lot about the Hungarian minority inSlovakia in the world media, as due to the counter-minority spirit of the amendment ofthe Slovak State Language Act, an international discussion evolved between therepresentatives of the Slovak government and the Hungarian minorityThe only positive side of this law amendment - which created a great stir - was that itset the Hungarian minority society in Slovakia in motion. They regarded this lawamendment as an attack against their language, and they became aware of theexisting deficiencies in guaranteeing minority rights in Slovakia.It became clear that the government does not need to discuss the sensitive questionof language use with the representatives of minorities. Although the political partyelected by voters of Hungarian nationality was seated in the Parliament, the Slovakgovernment was not willing to negotiate with this opposition party at all.
The government had a so-called minority council as its advisory organ and invitedone person each representing the thirteen minority communities in Slovakia.However, the Serb minority with a few hundred members was represented with theequal weight as the large Hungarian minority consisting of about half a millionresidents. Moreover, those minority organisations, whose leaders were invited to thecouncil by the government, depended on the financial support of the government.Otherwise this council did not have any jurisdiction, and its chairman was a memberof the government who a few years earlier wrote a book about the dangers of thepolitical representation of the Hungarian minority.The root of the problem was that the government modified the language regulationaffecting the use of minority languages without asking for the opinion of minorities.There is a lack of mechanism which would in all detail involve minorities in decisionsaffecting their lives.People engaged in minority issues realized that conflict-evoking modifications of thelanguage law cannot be avoided in the future, as long as a checking mechanism iscreated which ensures real consultations with minority representatives that areindependent from the government in questions affecting minorities.The Roundtable of Hungarians in Slovakia, which was established through thecollaboration of more than 70 civic organizations, elaborated a concept that wouldcreate an arbitral multilevel minority local government system. This representationwould be independent from political parties and the government. Its extraordinaryadvantage would be, on the one hand, that it would be a legitimate partner of the all-time government. On the other hand, it would guarantee elected representation tothose minorities that are completely chanceless for parliamentary representation dueto their small number. It would have its advantages in case of the larger Hungarianminority too, as the opportunity for the enforcement of interests regarding minorityissues would not depend on whether their political party elected in regularparliamentary elections is in the opposition or in the government.We are confident, based on our experience, that as long as the government is notwilling to treat national minorities as equal partners and deal with and solve theirproblems with the help of a constant checking mechanism in cooperation with themand to their satisfaction, several conflicts and grievances will occur. The formation ofa minority local government mechanism can help to move the emphasis of minorityquestions from political to professional level. It has to be said that tension merelycomes from the fact that decisions made during political compromises do not meetprofessional expectations. Practically, often the mistakes in lawmaking poison therelationship between the majority and minority and keep the minority from becomingsatisfied citizens of the country.A satisfied minority is not only the interest of minorities, but also of governments. It isa real state interest because a satisfied minority is a loyal minority. An honestminority-friendly policy of the state does not only eliminate conflicts in a country, but it
can also extremely improve the relationship between the given state and theminority's mother state. Eventually, it has a positive influence on internationalrelations, as well as the economy. Since it also strengthens regional cooperation, theinternational weight of the given countries increases too. I'm saying it here, inSouthern Tyrol, which is an excellent, confirmatory example.On behalf of the Hungarian minority in Slovakia, we would certainly like if the newlyelected Slovak government (by learning from the mistakes made between 2006-2010) , would become aware of this situation and regard minorities as partners.Although indications are different, we still hope that you will not hear about Slovakiaonly in a negative sense in the next 4 years. Minorities are definitely interested inconflict resolution (before conflicts even arise), but the government in power has themain influence on this.Now let me mention some concrete problems:First of all, regarding the question of the threshold of the use of language:In my opinion, the part of the regulation about the use of language, which wasattached to the ratification of the Language Act as a declaration by the SlovakParliament, according to which
the term ‚territory in which the re
gional or minority
language is used„, shall refer to the municipalities in which the citizens of the SlovakRepublic belonging to national minorities form at least 20 % of the population“
, is areal systematic mistake. This regulation is not in harmony with the structure of theSlovak public administration and does not respect the venue of public administrationoffices. In spite of the fact that on several settlements citizens belonging to a nationalminority form 80% of the population, they still cannot use their language for arrangingtheir affairs because the state offices, whose competence the given settlement fallsinto, are located on a neighbouring settlement with less than 20% of minoritypopulation.The question of the use of geographical names:In the past two decades the Slovak government's rigid attitude to the use ofgeographical names has been the source of numerous conflicts. It is necessary toknow that between the two world wars in Czechoslovakia, settlements inhabited bynational minorities could officially have their names in the minority language. AfterWWII (the second world war), a communist minister annulled the official names ofsettlements inhabited by Hungarians. With a single department order, he changedthe names of 700 settlements into Slovak, and with unbelievable cynicism he namedwhole settlements inhabited by Hungarians after such Slovak historical figures whodid not like Hungarians and never had any relationship with the given settlement intheir life.After the regime change, the inhabitants of settlements with Hungarian populationspontaneously placed the original Hungarian names next to the official name of the
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Horony Ákos - Central European Initiative, Bolzano-Bozen
http://www.kerekasztal.org/2012/05/kozep-europai-kezdemenyezes-cei-konferencia-bolzano-bozen/
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