Foreign minister: Hungary proposes to Ukraine pact on minority protection
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Hungary proposes to Ukraine signing an accord on the protection of national minorities, Foreign Minister Péter Szijjártó said on Wednesday.
“Confidence between the two countries needs to be rebuilt,” the minister told MTI in Warsaw, where he held talks with his Ukrainian partner Pavlo Klimkin on the sidelines of a security forum.
According to the proposal, both governments would refrain from pursuing any policy that could lead to the assimilation of a national community or change the ethnic composition in any single region.
Further, it would secure national minorities their language rights in the areas of education, religion, culture and administration.
Szijjártó said Ukraine promised to study the proposal. Hopefully, at the next meeting in Milan on December 7, a bilateral discussion of the proposal will ensue based on merit, he added.
It is clear that “rebuilding confidence requires several small steps to be taken,” he said. It has been a positive development that a signature drive initiating the deportation of ethnic Hungarians from Transcarpathia has been removed from the Ukrainian parliament’s website, he added.
“We consider it a very positive sign that Ukraine has taken it seriously that this issue is completely unsuitable to Europe in the 21st century,” he said.