You’ve been state secretary for national policy for six months now. How would you evaluate this period? What’s been your biggest challenge?
It's not about my time in office but about the national policy of the past 15 years. While I’ve only been in the role for five or six months, Hungarian national policy extends far beyond persons, individual figures or colleagues. It’s a massive team effort involving the Hungarian communities abroad, government support, and everyone who participates.
The greatest achievement over the last 15 years is the deepening connection between Hungarians in the motherland and those abroad—not just at the leadership and institutional level, but among young people, students, academics, university professors, and artists.
We help them with applications and grants, but from the beginning our goal was to weave an organic national policy network. In the past, left-wing governments did not want Hungarian people to visit Hungarians living across the border on an institutionalized level, with government support. Under communism, strengthening national bonds was out of the question. So I consider the greatest achievement to be that the network of the Hungarian nation is much tighter and much denser today than at any time in the last hundred years.
The "In Hungarian in your homeland" program was recently announced, offering Hungarian families living in neighboring countries one hundred thousand forints in school support. Some leftist media claim that students in Hungary don’t receive as much. Do ethnic Hungarians enjoy priority?
The Left's basic claim is unfounded, it's just the usual opposition rhetoric, because Hungary has the most comprehensive family support system in Europe. If you look at the amount of money that parents in Hungary receive for their children in the form of tax relief, tax deductible benefits and various programs, it is several times more than we can give to Hungarian children living beyond Hungary's border. The "In Hungarian in the homeland program" is designed to enable children to learn Hungarian in their homeland, their native country.
Someone studying their mother tongue in their native country is a value for us, which is why we support Hungarian education worldwide, and especially here in the Carpathian Basin.
This helps them to preserve identity and stay in their homelands. A stronger member of the Hungarian community will be someone who can learn in Hungarian from kindergarten to the end of their higher education. Therefore, when parents weigh the options of enrolling their children in a Slovak, Romanian, Serbian or Ukrainian language school, or – if there is one nearby – in a school teaching in Hungarian, we would like to support the latter choice.
So, can this program prevent the assimilation of Hungarians living outside Hungary in the long term?
It’s an important program in this struggle. No one says that this process can be stopped with a single program, since the degree of assimilation varies from region to region, and even within a part of a given country. Assimilation is completely different in Slovakia, for example, compared to Szekler Land, with high Hungarian population. Within Transylvania, those parts where the Hungarians live dispersed are exposed to a much greater danger of assimilation than regions more densely populated by Hungarians. The government aims to maintain identity through cultural programs, institutional support, and by helping churches, ensuring that families and small communities can remain Hungarian and thrive in their homeland.
In the international political context, the end of the Russia-Ukraine war seems to be approaching. How do you view the situation for Hungarians in Transcarpathia?
Of all the ethnic Hungarian communities, Hungarians in Trancarpathia live in the most difficult situation. Since 2015, their situation has been worsening, and the war has brought a very difficult time to all of Ukraine, including the Hungarians in Transcarpathia. We have provided continuous support for the Hungarian community there during the war. There is still Hungarian life in Transcarpathia, and this is very good news. In fact, not a single institution had to be closed due to the war or emigration.
From the perspective of national policy, what would you consider the right thing to do when the war ends: to encourage ethnic Hungarians who fled to the motherland to stay or to support their return to Transcarpathia?
We view every Hungarian community as a value where it lives, because they bring an added value to the Hungarian nation: even if just one community disappears, the Hungarian nation will become poorer. On the other hand, if a community can strengthen, the entire Hungarian nation will become stronger. We keep this principle in mind, and we try to enforce this principle with regard to the Hungarians in the Carpathian Basin. At the same time, we must also face the fact that many people have left Transcarpathia since the outbreak of the war.
In terms of numbers and geography, we see that most of those who fled have remained near the [Hungary-Ukraine] border, close to home and potentially ready to return.
Still, many open questions remain: When will the war end? During the peace talks and the EU accession process, can we negotiate with the Ukrainian government about lifting the restrictions on ethnic minority rights and restoring the rights minorities originally had? These are tasks that we will have to address even when there is peace.
Recently in April, two incidents occurred in which Hungarians living outside Hungary were targeted for their ethnicity. Do you see them as unique or isolated cases? Is anti-Hungarian sentiment rising again in neighboring countries?
We hope that these are isolated incidents, but it does not matter at all from the point of view that we must stand by every Hungarian who is subjected to any wrongdoing because of their Hungarian origin. This is unacceptable, and therefore we have asked both the Slovak and Romanian authorities to investigate the cases as strictly as possible and find the perpetrators. We have also called on neighboring countries to prevent any escalation of anti-Hungarian sentiment so that no such atrocities will be repeated.
With the Romanian presidential campaign underway, what’s your outlook on how the Hungarian minority will be treated?
One of the presidential candidates and the party behind him have often expressed explicitly anti-Hungarian messages. It is obviously unacceptable during the campaign period for anyone to be wronged or subjected to aggression because they are Hungarian. At the same time, it is clear that this kind of attitude has appeared or returned in Romanian public discourse. Of course, this is much less common in mainstream parties. I would like to have the best possible relationship with every country where Hungarians live, a kind of good-neighborly relationship. We strive for this, and we also see that this is possible, as there are examples before us. The Hungarians of Vojvodina in Serbia played a key role in the historical reconciliation between Hungary and Serbia, and in this way ethnic Hungarians also benefited from this reconciliation. We would like to have similar relations with all neighboring countries. This is in the interest of Hungarians both in Hungary and outside the country's borders, and in our opinion, this is also in the interest of the majority nation.
Peter Magyar has recently begun courting votes from Hungarians in neighboring countries. How receptive do you think those communities are to the messages of the Tisza Party?
Let me give you an example in this regard. Peter Magyar has held only one forum outside Hungary so far, in Komarno, Slovakia. We can see what kind of people showed up during his campaign tour or at his various forums and how many: far fewer than the Tisza Party expected. In Komarno, he even charged Hungarians an entrance fee, people had to pay. This shows very clearly the mindset of the liberal opposition.
They have always considered ethnic Hungarians to be second-class citizens. This leads to the conclusion that Peter Magyar and his supporters could be considered a kind of successor of the former Free Democrats (SZDSZ).
The referendum on December 5, 2004 [on granting dual citizenship to ethnic Hungarians with non-Hungarian citizenship and residence; the referendum failed due to low voter turnout] strongly reflected the liberal idea of disavowing Hungarians living beyond Hungary's borders. The socialist-liberal government completely forgot about ethnic Hungarians afterwards, and did not help or support them in any way.
Practically, this betrayal defines the mindset of Peter Magyar's left-wing and liberal voters.
Peter Magyar views ethnic Hungarians from the perspective of profit at best, rather than thinking in terms of national responsibility or unity. And there is another important point. It is also quite clear that, on the questions of Ukraine's EU membership and EU funds, the Tisza Party consistently echoes Brussels' position on vital national issues. Just recall how the Commission under the same leadership swept the Minority Safepack citizens' initiative off the table and put it in the deepest drawer in a far-away room. It is clear that the issue of indigenous national minorities is not at all important to the Brussels leadership, and they don't want to hear about it. We can expect the same neglect from Peter Magyar and the Tisza Party.
Cover photo: Lorinc Nacsa, state secretary for national policy (Photo: Attila Polyak)
