Trianon 100 – House speaker: Right to national identity universal human right

The right to one’s national identity must be acknowledged as a universal human right, Parliamentary Speaker László Kövér said on Thursday, arguing that “this cause serves the future of the Hungarian nation, neighbouring nations, and Europe at the same time”.

Kövér addressed a commemoration marking the centenary of the Trianon Peace Treaty in Parliament, saying that Hungary “has had 100 difficult years” but must focus on “the future ahead, which we ourselves can shape”.

Addressing a debate of a draft declaration on the protection of national identity submitted by the ruling parties, the speaker said the “tragedy” of the Trianon Treaty still impacted Hungarians today “and may also become a reoccurring future”.

Hungarians living beyond the border are engaged “in a bitter struggle to survive, preserve their mother tongue, culture, to feel at home in their place of birth” Kövér said.

The future can only be safe for Hungarians “if every generation engraves it in their heart and mind that they can only keep what they can protect”, he said.

The past cannot be changed, Kövér said, adding, at the same time, that its consequences could, “provided that we can learn from the past”.

One lesson to be learned from Hungary’s past, he said, was that the threats to the existence of the Hungarian nation had not subsided. He said another lesson was that there could always be a “large price to pay if we don’t pay attention to what’s going on in the world around us”. The third lesson, he said, was that countries could not make it far on the international stage without allies.

“In Trianon, the Hungarian state was sentenced to unviability, the Hungarian nation to separation and Hungary to political isolation,” the speaker said.

“But a century of hard work has made the Hungarian state viable and the ability of the nation’s cohesion to transcend borders has proven to be stronger than the forces that had intended to eliminate it.”

The nations living together in the Carpathian Basin and central and eastern Europe “will either laugh or cry together”, Kövér said. “They’ll either be winners together or they will all be losers.”