Fidesz MEPs: Situation of national minorities in Serbia ‘exemplary’
The situation of national minorities in Serbia serves as an example to the European Union given that Serbia “cherishes national minorities”, Fidesz MEPs said on Thursday at a meeting of the European Parliament’s Intergroup on Traditional Minorities, National Communities and Languages.
The meeting also examined the situation of Hungarians living in Serbia’s Vojvodina region, Kinga Gál and Andor Deli said in a statement to MTI.
The European Commission “is not taking meaningful measures” regarding national minorities, as its approach to Minority SafePack has shown, they said, referring to an EU citizens’ initiative that aimed to improve EU protections of national and linguistic minorities but was ultimately rejected by the EC in 2020.
“I think it is particularly important to point to examples outside the EU. Serbia takes the issue seriously and shows respect to national minorities, with a functional [minority] council system,” he said.
In his speech at the EP intergroup meeting, Árpád Fremond, the head of Vojvodina’s Hungarian council, said ethnic Hungarians in Serbia were the greatest beneficiaries of good relations between Serbia and Hungary. “We are grateful to … Hungary for doing everything in its power to keep Serbia’s EU integration on the agenda of EU institutions,” he said.
Gál, the intergroup’s co-chair, said her working group aimed primarily to have representatives of minorities brief MEPs firsthand. She praised the Hungarian National Council in Vojvodina as a way to preserve Hungarian minorities in Serbia. Ethnic Hungarians are the demographic group most committed to the country’s EU integration in Serbia, she said.
She called for the accession process to be speeded up while keeping the protection of minorities a priority to ensure the rights of Hungarians are guaranteed, she added.
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1 Comment
Hopefully Serbia “cherishes” their national minorities better today than in the 90s when they were committing genocide in Bosnia. Like Hungary Serbia does not protect the rights of the LGBTQ community. The 2022 EuroPride event in Belgrade was cancelled due to threats of violence. The Fidesz propaganda statement describing Serbia as “exemplary” also ignores the following:
Over the years, over 6,000 ethnic Albanians who are Serbian citizens have been removed from voter lists illegally and cannot vote, send their children to school, work, or buy property. The Helsinki Commission referred to it as “administrative ethnic cleansing.”
Chairman of the Albanian National Council Ragmi Mustafi says there must be a solution for the systematic discrimination they face at the hands of Serbian authorities. At the moment Hungarian-Serbian relations are friendly but dispense with baloney please.