Hungary will not be able to support Ukraine’s transatlantic and European integration in any case as long as Hungarian schools in Transcarpathia are in danger, Foreign Minister Péter Szijjártó wrote on his Facebook page, after talks with Ilze Brands Kehris, Assistant Secretary-General for Human Rights at the UN.
In a Facebook post, the Hungarian Foreign Minister recalled that while 1,300 schools and kindergartens in Hungary are accepting children and students who are refugees from Ukraine, 99 Hungarian primary and secondary schools in Ukraine are in danger of being closed due to the Ukrainian education law.
He added that since 2015, Ukraine has passed a number of laws that have gradually violated and reduced minority rights related to the use of mother tongues.
“For the past eight years, we have been receiving promises from the Ukrainian authorities that they would solve this problem, but in fact they have done nothing,”
Szijjártó wrote.
The foreign minister made it clear to Ilze Brands Kehris that Hungary will not be able to support Ukraine’s transatlantic and European integration as long as Hungarian schools in Transcarpathia are in danger.
Ukraine would like to join the European Union, but one of the conditions for them to start negotiations on their accession to the European Union was adopting a new law on national minorities. Therefore, a new law on the subject was adopted by the Ukrainian parliament last December; however, it came short of solving the actual problems.
Source : HUNGARY Today
