State Secretary Barna Pál Zsigmond has marked International Mother Language Day, saying that the issue was especially important to Hungarians as “the life and future of Hungarians across the border hinges on their homeland’s regulations on the use of their mother tongue”.
“We must do everything in our power to ensure that the laws and practices are adequate everywhere in the Carpathian Basin,” the state secretary of the ministry for European Union affairs said in a video posted on Facebook on Wednesday. The situation was “the most worrying” in Ukraine, he said, calling on Kyiv to restore the 2015 state of affairs and adhere to the recommendations of the Venice Commission. Zsigmond insisted that the EU was not taking the protection of ethnic minorities seriously enough. “Leftist politicians playing from Soros’s playbook and bureaucrats don’t think it is important at all… The protection of national minorities should be a European minimum.” Hungary insists that Ukraine cannot join the EU before it has restored and strengthened the rights of Transcarpathian Hungarians, he said.