Hungary's 11 conditions for Ukraine's accession to EU regarding minorities revealed
Hungary has put forward a list of 11 demands regarding minorities to Ukraine in exchange for its agreement to support the start of negotiations on countriesʼs accession to the EU, writes European Pravda.
Until now, the Hungarian demands have been non-public. Ukraine received the list from Hungarian Foreign Minister Péter Szijjártó in January.
Negotiations have been ongoing since then, but the Hungarian side has always opposed making the list public.
In addition, to comply with the Hungarian ultimatum, Olha Stefanishyna, Ukraine's Deputy Prime Minister for European and Euro-Atlantic Integration, was forced to declare that the Ukrainian side was ready to fully implement the 11 demands from Hungary.
Half of this list concerns Hungarian-language education, in particular, ensuring the use of the Hungarian language in the entire educational process, the possibility of obtaining a Hungarian translation of the External Independent Evaluation and the National Multisubject Test, the introduction of the status of a "national community general secondary education institution", etc.
There are also clauses on the status of territories where Ukrainian Hungarians have historically lived, for example, automatically recognising all settlements in Zakarpattia as "traditionally Hungarian", even those where Hungarians have never historically lived. Some of these points are problematic and no compromise has been reached.
Another part of the Hungarian demands relates to the political representation of national minorities, in particular, the requirement to guarantee their representation in the parliament. However, due to the impossibility of implementing this idea, Budapest has already begun to give signals of readiness to abandon it, although it has not completely withdrawn the demand.
