Government official praised one of the smallest Hungarian community abroad

Thirty years ago Hungarians in Croatia “emerged from the hardest of circumstances”, the prime ministerial state secretary for Hungarian communities abroad, said, declaring that “everything can be started anew if there is cooperation”.

After the Yugoslav war of the nineties, the region was in a state of economic and political collapse, and most Hungarians there fled to Hungary or dispersed elsewhere, Árpád János Potápi said after addressing the annual general meeting of the Democratic Union of Hungarians of Croatia (HMDK), in Beli Manastir (Pélmonostor), on Saturday.

Locals had to start life anew and move back to the villages of Baranja and Slavonia, Potápi told MTI by phone.

He welcomed the expansion of the HMDK with three new member organisations, one in Zagreb and two in eastern Slavonia. This, he said, further strengthened Hungarian unity.

Potápi also congratulated Róbert Jankovics, a Zagreb lawmaker who heads the HMDK, on their successes of the past thirty years.

The state secretary noted that the Hungarian government has raised the amount of education support for children studying at Hungarian-language kindergartens and schools to 100,000 forints (264 euros) from 22,400 forints.

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