“We will not abandon Transylvanian and Transcarpathian Hungarians and will fight to the bitter end in the conflicts that affect them”, Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade Péter Szijjártó declared at a press conference on Friday in Budapest.

“It is the duty of Hungarian foreign policy to protect Hungarians, no matter where they live”, the Minister emphasised.

The amendment of the Ukrainian Educating Act, against which Mr. Szijjártó is taking joint action with the Bulgarian, Romanian and Greek foreign ministers, is “shameful and outrageous, and severely violates the rights of minorities”, he said, point out: “This clearly indicates that this is not a Hungarian-Ukrainian dispute”.

The joint letter from the four foreign ministers was submitted to the Ukrainian Foreign Minister, the Secretary General of the Council of Europe, and the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe’s (OSCE) High Commissioner on National Minorities, he told the press. “The rights of every national minority have been severely violated, and this is something about which nobody can remain silent, Mr. Szijjártó said, adding that they will also be asking the Council of EU Foreign Ministers to put the issue on the agenda of their next meeting in October.

The new Education Act adopted by Ukraine’s Parliament on 5 September is aimed at modernising public education through reforms that will be introduced from September 2018. Section 7 of the Act, which concerns the language used for teaching, states: The language for education in Ukraine is the state language, and native language teaching for national minorities is only permitted in the first four grades of secondary schools.

In Romania, the situation regarding the Catholic school in Marosvásárhely (Târgu Mureș) is absolutely critical, and over a hundred Hungarian schoolchildren have had to be distributed among 15 other institutions in the region, Mr. Szijjártó also said.

The situation is worst for children in zero, i.e. preparatory grade, fifth grade and ninth grade. Children from the first two forms will be continuing their studies in other Hungarian language schools, but in different institutions, and almost all ninth graders have had to continue their studies in vocational schools rather than high school, he explained.

The Foreign Minister said that in his opinion it would seem that instead of striving to find a solution, in view of the fact that it has transpired that the continued operation of the school is solely dependent on the Romanian authorities, Romania has “pulled out the nationalist card again”, since one Member of Parliament has suggested that the returning of the school building to the Catholic Church should be reversed.

The review of the 2004 return of the former Ferenc Rákóczi II Roman Catholic Gymnasium was suggested by the People’s Movement Party (PMP) representative for Mureș County Marius Pascan, the county’s former Prefect.

In reply to a question, Mr. Szijjártó said the upcoming National Consultation would be about an issue that has a determining effect on the future of Europe, and the issue could be put before the Cabinet at its meeting next week.

With relation to the Azerbaijani money laundering scandal, the Minster confirmed his previous standpoint according to which if a series of international crimes has indeed been committed, then it must be investigated, because it is in everyone’s interests for the truth to be uncovered.

(Cabinet Office of the Prime Minister/MTI)