MERCATOR :: News

October 2004

CHANGES AFFECTING MINORITIES IN HUNGARY (Office for National and Ethnic Minorities, Hungary)

October 2004 – Several changes have been lately introduced in Hungary concerning its minority policy. As regards strictly linguistic issues, the Ministry of the Interior has compiled bilingual birth certificate forms, so that now persons declaring minority affiliation have two options: they may either apply for a Hungarian birth certificate with the phonetically written version of the name or they may apply for a bilingual one by choosing the forename of their child from a list of eligible names compiled by the national self-governments of minorities. Furthermore, the Hunnish minority is currently striving to gain recognition from the Government as a minority: if its members achieve to collect 1,000 signatures of persons declaring themselves members of this minority by the beginning of November, they may submit a petition for their recognition to the Parliament, which will then examine whether the community meets the criteria specified in the Act of 1993 on the Rights of National and Ethnic Minorities (Article 1; see the law in the link below). In the event that the Parliament decides to include this minority (number fourteenth), the law will have to be amended with a two-third parliamentary majority. As regards other issues within the framework of Hungary’s minority policy, the newly elected Prime Minister, Ferenc Gyurcsany, has introduced personal and structural changes in the government: the Office for National and Ethnic Minorities will be subordinated to the Ministry for Youth, Family and Equal Opportunity Affairs, headed by Ms Kinga Goncz, and it shall continue to operate as an autonomous organ of state administration with nationwide competence; moreover, he has launched a new government programme for 2004-2006, which envisages the preservation of the culture, traditions and languages of national and ethnic minorities living in Hungary. For more information, for instance on the issue of Hungarian minority communities living abroad, see the link to Minelres, below.