Hungary: Ditching the Diaspora?

Date: 06/09/03

The Hungarians have had to soften a law embracing all their ethnic kin

THE mere words “status law” are enough to make some Hungarian diplomats wince. “Preference law” is the term they favour now to indicate the ill-starred piece of legislation, properly called the “Act on Hungarians Living in Neighbouring Countries”, which has caused them so many headaches in the past two years.

The law was meant to give a financial and moral boost to ethnic Hungarian minorities in Croatia, Romania, Serbia and Montenegro, Slovakia, Slovenia and Ukraine. The trouble was, Hungary neglected to take fully into account the sensitivities of the respective governments. Romania and Slovakia in particular saw the planned handing-out of identity cards, educational benefits and Hungarian work permits to certain of their citizens as an unwanted interference in their sovereign affairs. The European Commission grumbled, too, that parts of the law smacked of ethnic discrimination, incompatible with the values of the European Union which Hungary planned to join in 2004.

A first attempt to revise the law, late last year, pleased few. A second attempt in May this year has been better received. Gone now from the text is the claim that Hungarians (or Magyars) living abroad form part of a “single Hungarian nation”, an assertion which neighbouring countries found vaguely threatening. Gone, too, is the promise of special work permits allowing Hungarians from neighbouring countries to work temporarily in Hungary and to benefit from the health and social-security systems there. “Hungarian certificates” will remain available to ethnic Hungarians who want them, but the law is clear that they can never serve as official travel or identity documents. The other main surviving provisions of the law concern financial and technical help for students and teachers learning or teaching in the Hungarian language in the neighbouring countries, and who consider themselves “Hungarian” by birth or marriage.

Even that was not quite enough for Romania, which insisted on additional terms. In Romania, holders of Hungarian certificates will not be able to claim certificates for their non-Hungarian spouses, though the status law would allow this. Hungary has also promised that some educational benefits will be available equally to all Romanian citizens studying or teaching in Hungarian, not only to those of Hungarian origin. These concessions have paved the way for a final deal due to be signed by Hungary's prime minister, Peter Medgyessy, in Romania next week.

Hungary hopes that a similar agreement can be reached with Slovakia, the status law's other main critic. This may be tricky, despite some optimistic noises at a foreign ministers' meeting in July. One Hungarian official says that Slovakia is willing in practice to accept the sort of measures to which Romania has agreed, but dislikes any talk of the status law as such. One answer might be a bilateral agreement between Hungary and Slovakia which echoed the provisions of the law without mentioning it.

For Hungary's ruling Socialists, the long job of tidying up after the status law has been all the more irksome, since they were not even the ones who invented it, though they did support it in parliament. That honour went to Fidesz, the nationalist party led by Viktor Orban, which lost power to the Socialists in last year's election - but which is regaining popularity now. Three out of four opinion polls published last week showed Fidesz leading, with 46-50% of the voters' support against 38-42% for the Socialists. Whatever the status law's fate, Mr Orban's brand of unashamed nationalism may be less out of style in Hungary than the country's neighbours, and Brussels, would like to think.

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