The last three and a half decades have seen a “revolution of national cohesion”, Zsolt Németh, the head of parliament’s foreign affairs committee, said at the Tranzit Festival in Tihany, at Lake Balaton, on Friday.
At a panel discussion on the unification of the nation following the transition to democracy, Németh said Hungarian politics had “questioned the status quo that essentially said it was impossible to build any sort of political, economic or cultural structure on national cohesion and a unified Hungarian nation”. He said one important step in this had been the establishment of the Hungarian Permanent Conference (MAERT) during the first government of Prime Minister Viktor Orbán. Afterwards, he added, there had been “countless political, economic, educational, church and civil structures built on this sense of national cohesion”. “That’s why we can consider the last 35 years a revolution of national cohesion,” Németh said, underscoring the need to “find the opportunities with which we can continue on this path”. Miklós Panyi, state secretary at the Prime Minister’s Office, said that the favourable international environment and external circumstances also contributed to enabling Hungary’s policy for ethnic minorities. “It offered a path” that provided an opportunity in bilateral relations to incorporate such issues as minority protection and local ethnic Hungarian community affairs, he added. Panyi said peace, economic stability, prosperity and good bilateral relations will be needed in the future, as well as strong local ethnic Hungarian representation and a strong motherland that can maintain a strong support system in ethnic minority policy. Head of the Alliance of Vojvodina Hungarians Bálint Pásztor said certain initiatives in Hungary’s policy for ethnic minorities had originated from Vojvodina Hungarians, citing the demand for dual citizenship as an example. Árpád Antal, a senior politician of the Democratic Union of Hungarians in Romania and the mayor of Sfantu Gheorghe (Sepsiszentgyörgy) said the developments since 2010 had successfully strengthened Transylvanian Hungarians’ self-confidence and added that demographic indicators had also been favourable.