“The Croatian Economic Development Programme has been more successful than expected, which is proof of the fact that there are many Hungarians in Croatia, Slavonia and Baranya County who would like to build their future and the future of the Hungarian minority via Hungarian investments”, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade’s Parliamentary State Secretary Levente Magyar said at a press conference.

“2 billion forints (EUR 6 million) in investment has arrived in this region over the past two years, and the enterprises and farmers who became the beneficiaries of this programme have realised 3 billion forints (EUR 9 million) in projects and investments”, Mr. Magyar highlighted. He referred to the fact that the mother country was previously not strong enough to be able to also be present in Croatia. “It is an old truth that from the perspective of Hungary and Budapest it was particularly the larger regions in which Hungarian communities were endangered that were important, but all this has changed”, he stressed. As he explained, since 2012 Hungary has had a strong national government, which is not only national, but also stable. “There exists an ability to take political action that was previously unavailable, and this has enabled us to once again embrace this part of the nation and to afford it a much greater level of support than we had the opportunity to provide previously”, he underlined.

He announced that we are not just talking about a one-off programme. “We would like to be present in the lives of Croatian Hungarians in both an economic and cultural sense, and to continuously introduce measures that reinforce this community”, the State Secretary said. He indicated that the government would like to see as many young people and children as possible in this community, to enable the future to be built, and for the Hungarian minority in Croatia to not only be able to be proud of its past, but also of its present and its future, too. He noted that the mood in Hungary is confident. “Thanks to the government’s measures, there are positive changes both demographically and with relation to the country’s spirit, that are almost reminiscent of the years of the regime change”, he highlighted.

The State Secretary expressed his joy with relation to the fact that after 100 years Hungary is finally strong enough again to be able to tangibly improve the situation of cross-border communities. “The most tangible and effective method of doing this is to fund cross-border enterprises, since the fate of the Croatian Hungarian community depends on them”, Mr. Magyar said, adding: “because if there are no viable enterprises and farmers who are able to build on the land of their birth, then a community also has no future”. Director of Croatia’s Economica Hungarica Foundation Hajnalka Palizs-Tóth told the press that following the press conference, as a result of the evaluation of the latest round of tenders, some two hundred funding agreements will we signed with farmers and entrepreneurs at total value of 840 million forints (EUR 2.5 million).

(MTI)