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Hungary is currently working to deepen its alliance with “most of its neighbors who used to be enemies,” Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto told the parliamentary committee for national cohesion on Thursday.
“It is clear that close cooperation, rather than isolation, is in the interest of all the Carpathian Basin countries,” Szijjarto said at his annual commission hearing, adding that both Hungarian communities in other countries and Hungarian ethnic minorities are central to this cooperation.
However, he said Ukraine “has raised its position against the Hungarian community at the governmental level.”
According to the head of diplomacy in Budapest, the “incitement to hatred” against the Hungarians and intimidation at the heart of Ukrainian government policy are “reminiscent of the darkest Soviet period.” The Kiev government’s promise to make Transcarpathia a success story between Ukraine and Hungary is still “at the level of propaganda.”
Relations between Budapest and Kiev have been especially strained in the last three years, after the Ukrainian parliament passed a new education law. Voted in early September 2017 and promulgated by then-President Petro Poroshenko, the new law introduced the 12-class system in Ukraine and the expansion of the use of the Ukrainian language in education.
According to the normative act, studies in secondary and higher education in Ukraine are conducted exclusively in the state language (Ukrainian), and education in minority languages is only available in kindergartens and primary schools.
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