The foreign minister has highlighted how Hungary is open to restoring relations with Ukraine, but it is not up to the Hungarian government to restore them.
Commenting in relation to the Ukraine's language law which discriminates against minorities, Péter Szijjártó said on Facebook that Ukraine’s education minister, Hanna Novosad, had promised to meet leaders of the Transcarpathian association of Hungarian teachers to agree on a way forward.
The minster said Novosad had agreed to do so in the presence of several witnesses, including Ukraine’s foreign minister. “I hope she keeps her word so we can return to good relations,” he wrote, adding that this did not depend on Hungary alone.
MTI reports that Minister Szijjártó met Novosad on Friday, who said after the meeting that proposals he had presented were not practicable.
According to Novosad, the Hungarian foreign minister had proposed that Ukraine should acknowledge Transcarpathian Hungarians as an indigenous ethnic minority, thus granting them the opportunity to study all subjects at primary and secondary school in their mother tongue. Secondly, Minister Szijjártó proposed that the number of Ukrainian language classes should be increased in minority schools rather than gradually shifting from Hungarian into Ukraine.