RMDSZ: European Stability Requires Settlement Of Ethnic Issue

(MTI) – European stability requires that the issue of ethnic minorities should be settled, Bela Marko, head of the Senate group of the Democratic Union of Hungarians in Romania (RMDSZ), told the Transylvanian Hungarian Television on Sunday.

Marko said he agreed with a recent statement of Hungary’s prime minister Viktor Orban, who said that Hungarians living in the Carpathian Basin were entitled to dual citizenship, collective or community rights and autonomy.

“In general, I have had a lot of disagreements with Hungary’s foreign policy, I would have preferred a dialogue with the neighbouring countries, I would have liked to see a presence on the part of the Hungarian government, but I must now agree with those suggesting in connection with the Ukrainian crisis that there is an ethnic issue waiting to be solved in Ukraine and elsewhere,”

Marko said one of the principles in settling the issue should be that borders must be left untouched. The other one, however, should be that, within country borders, solutions that could also include autonomy must be found for ethnic minorities.

Marko criticised the European Union and the United States for tolerating that the first thing the pro-European leaders who came power in Ukraine did was to try to abolish the language act.

“The United States is following a different approach on these issues to the one they followed in the 1990s. As for the European Union, I believe they should have taken a firm stand on this, and should have made it clear that there is no place for Ukrainian nationalism in Ukraine, and that the situation of other ethnic groups including Russians, Hungarians, Romanians must be radically settled.”

Source: http://mtva.hu/hu/hungary-matters