Deputy Prime Minister: New Hungarian citizens to number 1m by 2018

Budapest (MTI) – Hungary is set to have one million new citizens through its dual citizenship scheme by the end of the current government’s mandate in 2018, Deputy Prime Minister Zsolt Semjen told MTI on Sunday.

The authorities have received 700,000 applications for Hungarian citizenship by the end of this year and 650,000 people have taken their oaths already, he said.

Semjen expressed “limited optimism” regarding cooperation with new Romanian head of state Klaus Iohannis. He said that Iohannis as a mayor of Sibiu (Nagyszeben) had not displayed much interest in the affairs of ethnic Hungarians, either.

Romania’s new president, however, cannot deny the legitimacy of autonomy, something beyond doubt in western Europe, he said.

Hungarians in Ukraine’s Transcarpathian region are in the most difficult and dangerous position among Hungarian minorities abroad because their country is involved in a war conflict and Ukrainian nationalism has re-emerged, he said.