Hungary has granted its millionth Hungarian citizenship under the government’s dual citizenship program.
Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, President János Áder and Speaker of Parliament László Kövér were present at a ceremony to honor Vojvodina farmer Miklós Lajkó and his wife becoming Hungarian citizens.
“We are now celebrating the unity of our political nation,” President János Áder said in his address at the ceremony in the presidential Sándor Palace.
Lajkó and his wife “have shown us what being Hungarian means; they wanted to be Hungarian citizens because they consider themselves Hungarian, their mother tongue is Hungarian, they went to a Hungarian school and their ancestors were Hungarian,” the president said.
“We, in the mother country, should do no more than thank them for all that, thank them for preserving the faith and love of the homeland from generation to generation; for loving in Hungarian, working in Hungarian, speaking Hungarian to their children and having Hungarian dreams,” the president said.
The Hungarian parliament passed a government-initiated dual citizenship law in 2011 aimed at ensuring fast-track Hungarian citizenship for Hungarians living abroad, mostly to ethnic Hungarians in neighboring countries.