Visegrad summit cancelled as Orbán salts war wounds

Date: 28/02/02

By David Cronin

HUNGARY'S claim that post-World War II edicts issued by the former Czechoslovakia are incompatible with EU membership could hinder cooperation among central European countries, Prague's chief negotiator in the accession talks has warned.

Pavel Telicka said it is difficult to foresee prime ministers from the Visegrad 4 group (Hungary, Poland, the Czech Republic and Slovakia) meeting in the near future if there is a 'further escalation' of hostile comments made by leading Hungarian politicians against Czechs.

A row erupted after Hungary's premier Viktor Orbán told MEPs the post-war 'Benes decrees' violate the political criteria for joining the Union. The laws led to the expulsion of 30,000 ethnic Hungarians from current-day Slovakia and 2.5 million Sudeten Germans from what is now Czech territory in 1945-6.

Orbán's remarks prompted the cancellation of the Visegrad 4 summit, scheduled to take place in Budapest next week.

Telicka urged Orbán to clarify why he did not raise his concerns at a bilateral level before airing them in the European Parliament.

'We would say the decrees are no longer in legal effect,' said Telicka.

'We are not expelling anyone and we are not expropriating the property of anyone.

'I'm not sure we should all the time be digging in our history, although I have to admit there are parts of our history we can not be entirely proud of.'

Although the European Comm-ission has said the Benes decrees are not linked to EU enlargement, Orbán has stood by his comments.

'Hundreds of Hungarians in Czechoslovakia were deprived of their rights,' the prime minister said on Monday (25 February). 'We do not wish to be silent about it. So far, we have not raised this question in bilateral relations but, if European Parliament deputies raise it, we will give our opinion, whether certain people like it or not.'

Telicka also said it is vital that the EU sticks to its 'road-map' of finishing enlargement talks with the first wave of prospective entrants by the end of this year. 'You cannot call that anything other than a political commitment,' he said.

He is still hopeful, he added, that the Nice Treaty can be rewritten to give his country 22 seats in the European Parliament, even though France is opposed to any such changes.

A late-night deal at the Nice summit allocated 20 seats to the Czechs - two less than similarly-sized countries such as Portugal, Greece and Belgium.

Hungary's claim that post-World War II edicts issued by the former Czechoslovakia are incompatible with EU membership could hinder cooperation among central European countries, Prague's chief negotiator in the accession talks has warned.