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Hungarians in western Ukraine should get their rights back, Budapest says

"The Hungarian community’s opportunities to use its native language in the fields of education, culture, media and self-governance have been significantly limited," Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto specified

GENEVA, February 28. /TASS/. Ethnic Hungarians living in Ukraine’s Transcarpathia Region should get back the rights they used to have before 2015, Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto said.

"They used to have all the necessary rights before 2015. Unfortunately, their rights have gradually been violated and reduced since then. The Hungarian community’s opportunities to use its native language in the fields of education, culture, media and self-governance have been significantly limited," the top diplomat pointed out, addressing a session of the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva. He noted that the Hungarian community in western Ukraine numbered 150,000 people.

Szijjarto said that based on the current Ukrainian laws, 99 schools of the Hungarian ethnic minority in Transcarpatia had been turned into Ukrainian-language schools with limited time allocated to the teaching of Hungarian. "Budapest is confident that Hungarians living in Ukraine should get back all the rights they used to have before 2015," the foreign minister added.

Budapest has long been demanding that Kiev restore the rights of the Hungarian minority in Transcarpathia, warning that otherwise, it will not support Ukraine’s bid to enter the European Union. On December 8, the Verkhovna Rada (Ukraine’s parliament) passed a law on the rights of ethnic minorities, which takes into account the recommendations issued by the Venice Commission, an advisory body of the Council of Europe. The document removes a number of language restrictions on ethnic minorities that speak the official languages of EU member states. The Hungarian government said it would monitor how the law is implemented in practice.

On January 29, Szijjarto met with top Ukrainian diplomat Dmitry Kuleba and Ukrainian Presidential Office Chief Andrey Yermak in Uzhgorod (a city in the Transcarpathia Region) to discuss the entire range of issues between the two countries. The rights of Transcarpathian Hungarians were one of the focuses of the meeting. After the Uzhgorod meeting, the parties set up a working group to address the issue.

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